Future Pluperfect
by domenika marzione
Summary: Set in the aftermath of UXM350, Gambit's rescuer brings news of a new danger to Cable and the XMen.
1. Future Pluperfect 1: Future Gambit

Future Pluperfect: Chapter 1 

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Textual Poaching Alert: Marvel owns everyone but Mirrin, although Social Services would have stripped custody long ago...

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Oath, it's cold. Colder than the Canaanite palace. Flonq, colder than the palace food storehouse.

The woman stirred. Opening her eyes, she could see that she was sprawled, rather indelicately, atop a snowbank. It was enough to make her laugh out loud. 

_So that's what the stuff looks like._ She struggled to her feet, her balance slightly off. _I know it's natural for this time and place, but I still feel like I'm sitting in dessert._

The mental image of running around in a giant bowl of _piyar_, avoiding the berry syrup drooling down mounds of frozen spiced cream and dodging a steady rain of chopped nuts, sent her giggling anew and she had to sit down again. 

_So much for the vaunted Askani self-composure._ A frown and then a deep breath and she was all business again. _Time-ripping always did make me a little lightheaded._

Looking around, all she could see was white. As beautiful and exotic as it was, however, it did not lend itself to deciding in which direction she should go. She had been told that she would be arriving near one of the X-Men, but a quick glance around indicated that nobody at all was nearby. 

_If in doubt, meditate_, she thought to herself as she sat back down on the snow in meditation pose. Focusing her thoughts inward, she stopped being aware of her corporeal self at all. 

The astral plane in this time was much more colorful than the one she was used to, much more vibrant. In her own time, so much death and destruction had cast a dark pall over the plane itself, as if it were shrouded in shadow. Here, now, the shadow was gone and the colors were almost unspeakably bright and beautiful. 

Her own aura, by nature the blue of the midnight sky, was a much more brilliant hue. _As if it had been a cloudy night and the winds had come to clear the way for the moon_, she mused before stopping herself. _Concentrate, Mirrin. You don't have the time._

She felt her astral form take flight over the sea of color, shields in place to make sure she was neither disturbed nor detected. But search as she did, she did not find what she was looking for. _You didn't expect him to be just sitting around and waiting for you, now did you?_

After a time, the duration of which she would not hazard to guess, Mirrin's flight over the astral plane was suddenly rocked by a strong breeze. _What the..._ Turning over her shoulder, she could see a dark shadow approach over the horizon. 

_It's like the shadow from there-and-then_, she mused. _But it's just starting out here-and-now._ Transfixed, she watched as a finger of darkness moved closer, experimentally, only to be met by a pink flash and sent back to where the rest of the darkness lay lurking on the horizon. Another finger, broader than the first, edged forward a distance from the site of the first battle. It, too, was thrown back. But the light that met it was not pink, but instead a brilliant gold. 

_**There** you are!_

Slowly, she turned herself so that she could fly in that direction. But she had not gotten very far when she suddenly shivered. All of a sudden, the astral plane disappeared and Mirrin found herself again sprawled on a snowbank. 

But now instead of brilliant sunshine reflecting off the white, Mirrin could see only the last pink rays of dusk. And as a strong breeze picked up, she realized that the reason she had shivered on the astral plane was because she was freezing to death on the temporal one. 

_Great fore-thinking, you flonqing idiot_, she thought furiously as she brushed the snow out of her hair. _You were so confident that you could find Nathan and have him lead you to him that you didn't even come up with a contingency plan in case you didn't._ Overconfidence had always been her weakness. 

"Preparation is the key to survival," she spoke aloud, mimicking the voice of her first preceptor and ruing that she had forgotten that simple lesson. "Instinct is neither inherited nor inherent. It must be cultured and cultivated like a sapling so that it may grow strong as a tree. Only then will it provide shelter from the storm." 

Mirrin pulled her cloak around her shoulders more tightly, but knew it was not going to do much good. Askani robes were meant for the desert-like conditions of there-and-then, and even then additional garments were needed for the coolness of night. _Would it have hurt, Mother Askani, to have warned me to dress for the mission?_

She wasn't expecting an answer and was not disappointed when she didn't get one. Wise superiors, much like Oracles, tended to keep silent when their chosen vehicles were besieged by the petty details of grand plans. She muttered and smiled mirthlessly. _'Generals do not care about the mud in foxholes,' I think is the way that would translate here-and-now._

Another shiver ripped through her body and Mirrin hopped up and down to rid herself of it. _Not enough to sweat, silly girl_, she chided. 

_I don't have the strength to go back to the astral plane and track down Nathan_, she mused. _But perhaps I have enough to find the nearest living being._ Man or beast, it would mean warmth and food and shelter of some sort. 

Closing her eyes, she reached out with her telepathy once more, staying within the temporal realm as she spread her thoughts out even further than before, working like a bat testing for echo. It took only a few moments before she got her first 'ping'. Teleporting in his - she could tell it was human and male - direction as soon as she figured out where he was, Mirrin let out a flood of the Askani battle language's most colorful curses as she stood over her 'savior', a man huddled in a ball, completely inappropriately dressed, shivering in the snow. 

_Just my flonqing luck. I thought the story of the fool who uses a _kilap_ leaf to shield himself from acid rain was only a fable._

It may not be part of the mission, but she couldn't just leave him there to die. Not when the whole reason she had come back was to prevent death. Reaching into his mind to pick out the man's native language, Mirrin was surprised to see the foundations of some rather substantial mental shields. They were down now, the fellow's energies being needed for survival, but she could see that they would be quite formidable when they were active. 

She could also see that he was indeed the follower of Xavier she had been sent to meet. She knew his story, more or less, and knew who he could become in one of several possible futures. 

#_Hola?_# She asked gently in his mind and then reeled backwards as her presence was slammed by the reactivated shields. "Un amie," she gasped, her arm extended in a defensive posture as she looked up at the man who now stood above her, red-and-black eyes blazing. "Je suis un amie!"

"Je ne l'ai aucun," Gambit spat back, anger and grief giving him strength, although his voice was hoarse from exposure to the elements. "So who are you, den?"

"Someone who needs your help," Mirrin breathed out. 

"Can't help no one anymore," he half-shrugged, half-sagged. "'Specially out 'ere. Not unless you jus' wanted to make sure you didn't die alone."

Mirrin smiled a wolf-smile. "Wrong, ami." 

"Hein?" He sat (collapsed) next to her on the ground. 

"Think of the mansion," she told him. "Et nous serons là."

"An' who says I want to be dere?" Gambit asked with a raised eyebrow. Or that they want me there, he asked to himself. 

But he didn't get a chance to say anything more aloud. Mirrin had caught enough of a glimpse of his memories when she had mentioned Xavier's estate. She took a firm grasp of his arms and closed her eyes to concentrate. When he opened his mouth to protest, all that came out was a soundless scream as the world suddenly blurred around him. 

****

Gambit opened his eyes slowly. They were in the mansion's living room and his mysterious companion was collapsing onto a nearby couch. Looking around to see if anyone had seen them, he noticed that the lights were off and the place was silent. He also noticed that there was no stink of brimstone and sulfur, the tell-tale marks of Nightcrawler's teleportations. _Of course, Kurt would have killed us both had he tried to 'port from Antarctica._

"Nous sommes ici? Do you know where we are?" Mirrin asked in a whisper, hands to her throbbing temples. Teleportation in this here-and-now was a lot harder than in her native time, that much was for certain.

He nodded. "Dere's nobody home, or nobody awake," he whispered back. Gambit had no idea what time it was here in Westchester. Looking around for the grandfather clock that should have been against the wall, Gambit found nothing. Now that he looked around, the place looked different, as if it had been ransacked. "Or nobody alive."

Mirrin furrowed her brow and concentrated. "There are some others present," she said after a pause. "But a reunion can wait until later. After we have found sustenance and warm clothes. Are you wounded?"

_Only in the heart and soul_, Gambit thought to himself. Outwardly, he shook his head. Mirrin looked skeptical, but nodded. 

Gambit was used to sneaking around the mansion, usually when he'd come home late after an evening in town and not want to disturb sleeping teammates. As such, the combination of his thief's skills and his familiarity with the mansion had given rise to the ability to get from the door to his room without making a sound. 

But now, now he didn't feel like a kid sneaking past his parents after curfew, the way he used to as he would creep by Jean and Scott's bedroom door. Now he felt like a thief skulking through someone else's home, an unwanted and unexpected visitor looking for precious things to take. Instead of the thrill of getting away with breaking house rules (not that there were any, it was more that if Summers didn't know when you had gotten in, he couldn't use it against you in the Danger Room), all he felt was the acute despair of seeing all that he had lost. _Shoe's on the other foot, hmm, Remy?_

Gambit turned around to see where the woman was and nearly bumped into her. That was another point of discomfort - who was she? His instincts told him that she meant no harm, but his instincts had been half-frozen (like the rest of him had been) when she had appeared. Sinister himself probably would have looked harmless had he been carrying a warm coat.

Sinister. What if she was one of Sinister's minion, sent to him as a Trojan horse to bring into the mansion and destroy it from within? Gambit fought back the bile rising in his throat has he suddenly wondered if he hadn't just betrayed the X-Men (again) through his own naïveté and selfishness.

#_Your self-flagellation is completely unnecessary_,# Gambit heard dimly in his head. She was speaking to him telepathically, but she was doing so in a fashion that kept her at a distance from his mental shields. #_I apologize for adding to your already considerable worries. I am not here to hurt, but to help. And you may call me Askani._#

He nodded quickly - this was neither time nor place to carry out this discussion - and turned back forward and went up the stairs slowly praying that nobody was walking around on the second floor. Nobody was. 

The door to the room that had once been his was locked and Gambit bit back a curse. He had no tools on him - anything he had been carrying had been kinetically charged for warmth back in the Antarctic. Looking over at the table underneath the mirror across from Drake's room, he remembered that there should be at least a screwdriver in the top drawer. Even better, there were three bobby pins and a pen, the table and drawers functioning as a catch-all storing place for anything that was found on the floor nearby. Idly, he noticed that the emerald earring for which Rogue had nearly turned the house inside out while searching was there as well.

Once inside his quarters, Gambit nearly tripped on boxes that had been stacked near the door. The room was obviously being used for storage, a fact that amused him in a perverse way. He turned around at the sound of the door closing gently. 

"They are not anticipating your return anytime soon," Mirrin observed dryly. 

"Dey left me to die," Gambit replied with an indifference he did not feel. "Should feel lucky dey didn't put someone else in 'ere."

Mirrin shook her head sadly as she picked up the heavy blanket folded at the foot of the bed and wrapped it tightly around herself. #_He wraps himself up in his guilt in the same way. Much as Nathan does, I suppose. Self-loathing as both companion and containment, to both fetter and set free._# She wondered if she had the time or the energy to save this soul as well. 

The air was warm here, far warmer than the freezing cold they had been in, but her bones still ached from the chill. She saw Gambit standing by a shattered mirror holding something. Walking a few steps towards him, she could see him holding a similarly shattered picture frame and could feel the grief coming off of her companion in strong waves. 

"Go get some clothes, hmm?" She closed the distance between them and put her still-cold hand on his arm. He put down the picture, face down, and nodded silently. Mirrin could feel his eyes on her as he went to the drawers across the room, so she resisted the urge to pick up the picture and instead returned to the bed. She found a spot not taken up by boxes and bags and sat down, willing herself to warm up. 

Considering how emotionally bruised Remy seemed to be, Mirrin regretted having to keep up her formal persona. Her role within the sisterhood had allowed - indeed had been created to deal with - her own free-spiritedness. As such, she had rarely needed to put on the cold mask of austerity for which the Sisterhood was (in)famous. That she had to use it now, when it so clearly needed to be discarded...

"'Ere." Mirrin was startled out of her reverie by Gambit, who held out a sweatshirt and sweatpants. "'Til yours dry."

She nodded in thanks, then in amusement as he turned around so that she could change. The material felt foreign to Mirrin's skin - softer and more luxurious than the synthetics that all but the richest wore - but she did feel warmer almost immediately. 

"D'you want to risk de kitchen?" Gambit asked. 

"No risk," she answered, wiggling her fingers around her head to indicate telepathy. "We can go unnoticed."

"Telepaths 'round here," he said with a frown. "Dey won't notice you messing wit' dere heads?"

Mirrin smiled mirthlessly. "No."

"Well, let's go see what's in de fridge, hein?" Gambit matched her cold smile. 

The pair went out into the hallway and were almost to the stairs when Bobby Drake opened his door and walked into the hall. Gambit froze and looked at Mirrin, who indicated that they should flatten themselves against the wall. Sure enough, the X-man known as Iceman never acknowledged their presence as he walked by and then proceeded down the stairs as if he were alone. Gambit stared at Mirrin and she shrugged. 

#_He sees us_,# she spoke in his head. #_He just doesn't realize it_.#

Gambit shrugged - he'd seen enough head games over the years - and continued down the stairs. Thankfully, Drake hadn't turned right to go towards the kitchen, instead heading left in the general direction of rooms that functioned as an entertainment centers. 

Judging by the state of the kitchen, it was between lunchtime and dinner. The dishwasher was running and a large stockpot was on the stove. Looking inside, Gambit saw chicken noodle soup cooling - it was obviously Joseph's turn to cook. Opening up the refrigerator confirmed it - there were the remains of the potato casserole Joseph invariably made when cooking for a full house. 

Mirrin had found two large mugs on the counter and scooped soup directly from the pot with them as Gambit cut two large slices out of the casserole. They drank the still-warm soup greedily, not bothering to heat it up further. 

#_Careful_,# Mirrin warned. #_Your stomach has grown accustomed to being empty_.# 

Gambit nodded reluctantly - he'd gotten close to starving enough times before and knew the complications. He ate his piece of the casserole carefully, wrapping most of it up in plastic to be eaten later. 

The went back up to Gambit's room then, not wanting to risk any further chance meetings. 

Gambit turned to his partner in crime as soon as the door was closed. "Now what?"

Mirrin sat down on the bed to think. Her original plan had been just to talk to Nathan directly. No need to be any more like Sanctity than absolutely necessary. But she knew better than most just how intractable the man could be, especially when his personal well-being was in question. So perhaps an indirect approach might be better. Especially since an opportunity had just presented itself so nicely. 

"Maintenant, we depart and you shall make your own entrance."

Gambit just stared at her. "You 'xpect me to walk 'round de block and den come back and ring de doorbell and say 'Gambit's home!'?"

"I expect you to go further than that, mais pourquoi pas?"

"Where're you gonna be?"

"Elsewhere."

"And how'm I supposed to explain how I got back from Antarctica?"

Mirrin allowed a beatific smile and repeated one of her favorite sayings. Gambit started at her blankly until she translated. "Creativity is the heir of necessity. Mendacity is the bastard pretender to the throne."

"Dat's Askani philosophy?" He wrenched an eyebrow.

"Of a sort." _Tetherblood has a delightful way with words_, Mirrin mused and then grew serious. "'There is a middle path between veracity and falsehood and the wise know when that is the most direct route to the goal' is the more official doctrine. Without claiming to be wise, I suggest that be the road we choose."

"You ain't gonna come wit' me and you ain't gonna let me tell 'em the truth. Not telling the truth is exactly how I ended up in the Antarctic in the first place."

"You can tell them if you'd like," Mirrin replied with a shrug. "That you got rescued by a benevolent individual."

Gambit frowned and his eyes flashed red and black. "De reason I didn't tell the whole truth about the Morlocks and the reason I got punished for it was because I wasn't smart 'nough to ask questions before I did someone's bidding. I don't plan on making dat mistake twice, hein? 

"I want to know 'xactly what you are hoping to make me do. Now. And if I don't like it, you might as well dump me back in the snowbank. I won't betray the X-Men again. Especially for someone I don't know and who could be working for an enemy."

"Stab your eyes, you flonqing idiot,_ they_ betrayed _you_," Mirrin mumbled angrily and in English. Looking up, she could see the surprise in Gambit's eyes. He had heard her. She met his glance and held it. "In my own here-and-now, acceptance into a clan means automatic acceptance of past sins. Your life begins anew when you swear loyalty and you are never judged on what transpired beforehand."

"Je le comprends," Gambit looked down as he answered. "But I didn't come 'ere wit' a clean slate. I didn't give them all the information before they had to choose."

"What is, is. There is but one past and many futures, so those who refuse to trade the one for the many deserve the destruction that they bring down upon themselves," Mirrin said, then shook her head. "But we are not here to sit in judgment of philosophy."

"You were gonna tell me 'bout what you want me to do in return for you rescuin' me," Gambit prompted. 

Mirrin nodded and pulled the medallion out from under her clothes. "As I said before, you may call me Askani. You obviously know what that means. I come from Cable's time. I need to keep an eye on the Askani'Son and I want you to help me."

"You work for Rachel?" Mirrin nodded (it was close enough to the truth) and Gambit looked flatly at her. "You want me to spy."

"Plus ou moins," Mirrin agreed. 

"Why don't you do it yourself? Why me?"

Mirrin laughed bitterly. "For someone who can act so similarly to him, you don't know Cable very well, do you? If I tell him that his life is at risk, he'll laugh at me. If I tell him not to do something because it's going to get him killed, he'll try it before I can turn my back. Nathan is a very large, very strong three-year-old. Don't let the plasma rifle fool you. It's his baby blanket."

"So you want me to brave de plasma rifle and tell 'im not to do whatever it is you don't want 'im to do?" Gambit looked skeptical. 

"No, I don't want anyone telling him what he should or should not be doing. He has enough people in his life doing that. I just want to make sure he doesn't get any unusually bad ideas on his own. I may need you to run a few errands to make sure that he doesn't." #_Just color me brown and call me Blaquesmith_,# Mirrin added to herself.

"I knew there was a catch."

"I'm not going to ask you to endanger yourself," Mirrin assured. "At least not yet. I can assure you that you'll be better off here than in Antarctica."

"Which brings us back to th'original question - how do I jus' show up on the doorstep?"

"As I said, you are a thief and thieves always carry around a spare set of truths. You'll figure it out. I would take you to your home town and let you come back on your own, but we don't have the time."

"Where will you be? How will I contact you?"

"Around. And I'll contact you." She sat up with a noise in the hallway. "Someone out there senses something...There's someone _sniffing_ outside the door."

Gambit paused and listened. "Wolverine."

Mirrin cursed in Askani. #_Are you ready to leave?_#

Gambit nodded. 

#_I need a mental picture of someplace near here where we won't be noticed appearing._# Mirrin looked out the window. #_Can you picture the corner of the grounds?_#

Before Gambit could nod, he felt the world shimmer once more. 

***

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http://www.geocities.com/nikimarzione/ 


	2. Future Pluperfect 2: Secrets

Future Pluperfect: Chapter 2 

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"Come out, come out, wherever thou art!" Mirrin called down the hallway, the Askani sounding pleasant to her ears after so much exposure to English. The Mother Askani had made her memorize several pictures, all of them corresponding to places she would need to be in the late twentieth century. This was supposed to be one of Nathan's hiding places. 

She had shown up twice before, both times to spend the night, but there had never been any signs of life. This sundown, however, a light was visible from down a hallway and Mirrin could hear the peculiar shuffle-shuffle-step-step gait that could only belong to one person.

"Who comes this way?"

"Blaquesmith, you overgrown pelliworm, whom, exactly, were you expecting?"

"Someone a little taller, about thrice your weight in stones."

The man in question emerged from the shadows carrying a wrench, looking the sweatsuit-clad Mirrin over critically with his large eyes, "and not dressed like a fugitive from the Canaanite training academy. From where did you acquire this raiment, Mirrin?"

"My contact within the X-Men," Mirrin spun around to show off her outfit and grinned wildly. "I find them quite warm and comfortable, therefore they must be completely inappropriate for public usage, correct? Although I have not drawn many stares as I wandered about this city."

"Not inappropriate, just very informal. Do you have your robes or do I need to procure you new ones?"

"But these are made from actual **plants**," she pouted. In the face of Blaquesmith's unimpressed look, Mirrin walked over to the place where she had hidden her robes on the first night. 

"You've been storing your things in the holographic projector?" Blaquesmith asked with a horrified frown. "It is fortuitous, then, that nobody has tried to use it. The laser imager would have burned everything to a crisp."

"Would that I were so lucky," she replied darkly, holding up the robes. "It would be just as well. These are sorely in need of cleaning and repair. My arrival in this time was a bit rough."

The small man went over to one of the banks of monitors and typed in a sequence. "I'll add in a warmer cowl so that you may change out of that... disguise. Do you need battle garb as well, Sister?"

"Subtle as always, Blaquesmith. I would have told you what you needed to know without subterfuge. Yes, I will need such."

There was a hum and a flash across the room and presently Mirrin could see a small pile of what she knew to be Askani-appropriate clothes. So much for her pretense of freedom. 

"I don't even want to know how you got those so quickly," Mirrin muttered. "Apparently Greymalkin's loss has not proved a burden."

"You know about that?"

"We are not short of retro-cognitives, Blaquesmith. That is why I am here-and-now. And it is why you must return there-and-then presently." 

Mirrin smiled inwardly as Blaquesmith started sharply - surprising the Mother Askani's pet meddler was a rare and delicious treat. "I'll explain after I change. Is there an appropriate place, or do I ask you to avert your gaze?"

Blaquesmith was pacing when Mirrin returned from what she assumed was Nathan's chambers within this safehouse. "Now, shall we discuss your mission?"

"My mission is not for your ears, dear Brother, as your knowledge of it would do damage to the timestream we both left in the there-and-then," Mirrin replied blithely, ignoring Blaquesmith's frown of dismay. "That is undoubtedly part of why you are to return to our native spot, but whilst you are at home, you will receive instruction on a new course of action hoped for by the time watchers."

"Has the entire Sisterhood fallen into Sanctity's thrall since we left?" Blaquesmith asked with a growl. He resumed pacing, his waving arms accentuating his words. "The time watchers would have me steer the Askani'Son in the direction of their choosing?"

"You accuse _me_, of all people, of choosing the Sisterhood's wishes over Nathan's free will? Over anyone's?" Mirrin's voice was quiet, yet the anger was enough to still Blaquesmith's pacing immediately. It had been a low blow, Mirrin thought, but a necessary one. It was also all the lower because Blaquesmith was not wholly wrong and she was relying on his guilt to make sure he didn't realize that.

"No, dear Sister, I do not," he said quietly, bowing in apology. "But I do ask what the retro-cognitives would like to... encourage of me."

"I don't know for sure, but I suspect that they would like to discuss with you the changes in the timestream that you and Nathan have already wrought," Mirrin said, then sighed. "Look, Blaquesmith, all I know for certain is that you can't be here-and-now during my mission. I assume that while you are there-and-then certain of my sorority would like to wield what little authority they have over you to make sure that Nathan is a good boy and all, but you are certainly experienced enough in their tactics to be impervious to their demands. The sum total of it all is that you need to be absent here-and-now and the rest is just politics."

Blaquesmith said nothing for a long moment, then smiled gently. "You have always been such a terrible Askani, Mirrin."

"On the contrary. I am a very good Askani. I just don't offer my blind devotion easily," she said, returning the smile and inwardly breathing a sigh of relief that Blaquesmith was not questioning her further. "What is, is, and the rest is just detail."

"You are too much like Nathan for everyone's good, do you know that?"

"So my Sisters tell me repeatedly," she agreed readily, then changed her expression to a more businesslike one. "I don't know exactly what sort of chronological constraints your return has been given, but I expect they'd like you back sooner rather than later."

"Bid Good Journey to Nathan and then go?"

"Presumably. But do not tell him that I am here."

Blaquesmith raised his eyebrows, but said nothing. 

"I need to formulate some sort of plan before I greet him," Mirrin explained. "He hates it when I show up and look indecisive."

Blaquesmith smiled warmly for the first time. "It is good to see you again, Mirrin."

***

It had gone easier than Gambit had expected. Which wasn't to say that things were going well, more that he had expected to be shot on sight by his former teammates and anything else came as a pleasant surprise. 

As the weeks had rolled by, his reintegration into the X-Men moved along slowly. Gambit worked out with the others in the Danger Room and took his shifts with dish and dinner duty - McCoy had broken a tense moment during the latter with a toast over a double teaspoon of liquid antacid - but did not socialize much. 

Wolverine and Storm treated him as they always had, Rogue wouldn't stay in the same room, and Joseph walked around looking guilty. But the rest maintained a sort of wary skepticism that ranged from Angel's diffident coolness ("Don't worry about it, Gumbo, Warren's not sure I belong here," Logan had told him) to Jean's concerned consideration. 

It was Rogue's reaction that had puzzled and confused Gambit the most. Although she had warned him that he had a place neither with the X-Men nor with her, Rogue had not protested when it was announced that Gambit would remain part of the team. In fact, she had not reacted at all. Gambit, being a man of passions - either love or hate would do, was unprepared for the gray ambivalence. 

More out of recognition of everyone else's concerns than his own, Cyclops had him on restricted duty. As such, the furthest Gambit had gone was to Rockland County with Storm, The resulting extra shifts on the monitor had him ready to give up ever watching television again, in addition to giving him plenty of time to ponder the twists his life had so recently taken. That the Askani had seemingly disappeared into the mist after returning him to Westchester only made him more uncomfortable - he knew too well that no debt ever goes unpaid for long.

Over the last few days, however, Gambit hadn't had much time to ponder either the Askani or Rogue. There were calls coming in from around the world concerning a rash of new anti-mutant activities. At first, they had thought them to be simple terrorist attacks, but soon it became apparent that something more dangerous was afoot. 

The attacks were all on alpha-class mutants. A telepath from Geneva, whom Cerebro had indicated could be almost as powerful as Psylocke, was car-bombed. A US Navy SEAL with an advanced healing factor was aboard a boat that sank under mysterious circumstances. A Bangladeshi teenager with the ability to turn into a condor was shot with a high-powered rifle while in her bird form. A Wisconsin man who could store electrical energy was pushed out of a window. And that was just on the first day.

What made the incidents all the more alarming was that there were no bodies being found. Even if the victims could have survived the attacks, they had not resurfaced anywhere. Bastion and his troops liked to leave their exemplars in high profile dumping grounds, so the chances of the disappearances being linked to Operation: Zero Tolerance were small at best. 

The X-Men were searching the globe for likely suspects to be leading such a spree. Cable had reunited with some of X-Force to trace the Marauders in case Sinister was involved. Jean and Betsy were taking marathon shifts with Cerebro searching the astral plane for anomalies, while most of the rest were rotating through scouting missions and routine duties. Except for Gambit, who got to sit at the monitor and take messages unless there was a call in that no one else was around to handle.

Things had taken a turn for the worse this morning with reports of entire villages turning up massacred. One in Slovenia, one in Mozambique, and a third in Mexico. All three had had high percentages of mutants in their population, but the slaughter had been indiscriminate. 

The Mexican town had been thought to be the victim of environmental poisoning - probably in the water supply -judging from the flu-like symptoms described in the records of a nearby hospital. But nothing had been found in the well and the toxicology screens by the local pathologists had come up clean. Yet a population of two hundred, mostly farmers, had died when their blood would no longer carry oxygen. 

The settlement in Mozambique had been seemingly firebombed, although early reports sent back confused messages about the nature and path of the conflagration. The bones of sixty families had been found burned clean.

The village in Slovenia had been the most gruesome discovery. Storm had gone off with Wolverine and Cannonball after a call reporting the massacre to Interpol had been intercepted. The three had returned a few hours ago, all in various states of shock. An ashen Storm had gone directly to her attic after delivering her report, not even stopping to greet her teammates. Sam Guthrie was a shadow of himself, and even Wolverine, the man fazed by almost nothing, was subdued. 

"Do you know what's going on?"

"Pardon?" Gambit's head snapped up from the computer screen he was reading. Psylocke was standing by the other end of the bank of monitors. 

"D'you know what's going on? If Logan's not even snarling at Warren, then something must have happened," Betsy Braddock elaborated. "I've been in with Cerebro since morning."

"Another village was wiped out, comme ça," Remy answered, waving his hand in a dismissive fashion, disgust on his face. "This one was ugly, dat's all I know."

"Ripped ta shreds," Sam Guthrie said quietly from the doorway. "The entire town was full of body parts and blood. No whole bodies left, not a one. It was like a bomb had gone off and the dogs had come through. Ah've never seen anything so... thorough." 

"You going to be all right, Sam?" Betsy looked him over critically.

"Ah'm a big boy."

"Dere ain't no shame in bein' rattled by this," Gambit ventured. He was never sure where he stood with those who hadn't been around during the Antarctic mess. Mostly Gambit took his cue by who that person was close to. Jubilee, for instance, was following Wolverine's lead and Kitty Pryde had shown him no negativity when he had communicated with Muir Island. Gambit would figure Guthrie to react as Cable might, but the erstwhile Summers hadn't been around - probably explaining the Askani's absence, Gambit thought idly. 

Guthrie nodded. "Ah'm goin' to go wash up."

The elder two watched him leave. "He'll be all right," Betsy said once Sam's feet could be heard on the stairs. "He'll puke a few times, scrub himself raw in the bath, not eat meat for a day or two, and then he'll be fine."

She gave Gambit a sardonic smirk and then went back to the room that held Cerebro.

After Jubilee had come and relieved him from monitor duty, Gambit stopped in the kitchen to grab food and then went off to his room. He felt guilty sitting in the kitchen, unscathed and with no greater discomfort than dry and tired eyes, while the others wandered by after having been working to the bone. 

Gambit nearly dropped his apple when he turned on the light in his quarters and saw Mirrin perched on his bed. 

***

"Good Evensong to you, fair friend," Mirrin stood up and bowed. "May the winds have been gentle at your back and the skies clear for your passage."

"Bon soir t'you as well," Gambit inclined his head towards the woman. "Forgive me for not bein' overjoyed t'see you."

"I'm Askani, I'm used to it," Mirrin replied brightly. "You look wealthy."

"Hein?" Gambit's left eyebrow shot up. 

"Perhaps that is not the proper translation," Mirrin mused as she sat back down on the bed and frowned. "In my own here-and-how, someone who looks healthy and well fed is usually quite well off in terms of worldly goods. In my own tongue, we use the same expression for both situations."

"Got a similar t'ing where I come from," Gambit said, thinking back to the thieves' guild and nodding in comprehension. "But you ain't 'ere to check out my well-being, are you?"

"'Without formalities, the world is but a casual reminder of days of yore.' But you are correct, I have more than just your health in my consideration," Mirrin agreed. Gambit noticed that she was wearing a clean version of the clothes she had worn in the Antarctic, plus a few additional garments. Since he had had to burn her old ones when they had been left behind, he wondered where she had gotten the fresh supply. "The violence of the last few days has brought me to you."

Gambit didn't even pretend to not know of what Mirrin was speaking. "Dat stuff is related to Cable? Why am I not surprised?"

"It isn't directly related to Dayspring, but it will be soon, sooner than I would like. The Kurioon is close to rising."

"The what?"

"The Kurioon. It is an army, after a fashion. It is very powerful, very dangerous, and extremely difficult to defeat. The leader impresses mutants to be lieutenants."

"Impress like pirates?" Gambit asked and Mirrin nodded. "That would explain why we didn't find any bodies a few days ago, but what about the villages? All the bodies were mutilated."

"The Harvesters don't need the corporeal parts of their energy sources."

Gambit sat down heavily on the chair by his desk. "This is starting to sound too big for jus' one man to deal wit'. If you're sure that you're right, we should bring in de rest of the X-Men."

"No!" Mirrin cried out. "We have to keep Nathan as far from this as possible."

"Know you want t'protect him and all, but if he knows how to deal wit' this 'Kurioon', then maybe..."

"The Kurioon is being assembled precisely because of Dayspring," Mirrin explained with a shake of her head. "Someone sent back the kernel of a Kurioon in order to eliminate the Askani'Son here-and-now, before he finds opportunity to slay Apocalypse. They mean to avoid a nexus point that will prove unfavorable to the Chaos Bringer."

"Stryfe?"

"I do not know if that pale copy is who is behind the arrival of the kernel. All the retro-cogs could see was the when-and-where of the insertion. But it is really of no matter by whom - or even why - the Kurioon kernel was sent here. Just that it is eliminated before it grows large enough to succeed."

Gambit smiled weakly. "And this is where I come in, right?" 

"I shall need you to keep Nathan away while the rest of your group fights the Kurioon," Mirrin said. 

"Why do I get de feeling that you have no problem sacrificing the lot of us to save Cable?"

"The robes give me a sinister air," Mirrin suggested, although she did not deny in her heart that, should it come to such, Gambit was correct. "Ideally, I would like there to be no casualty but the Kurioon. It is still early in the fight and the kernel could not have grown much. The Harvesters must feed long and deep before the genesis can begin."

Gambit suppressed a shudder of revulsion. "How many more villages?"

"It depends both on their size and on how much energy can be drawn from them. It could be six, it could be ten, or it could be three."

"Is there any way to figure out which ones are goin' to be hit before it happens?"

"Not unless you have quite sophisticated detection devices," Mirrin replied with a frown. "Here-and-now, the Kurioon has a much greater variety of energy source from which to choose. It will draw from all races and all geographic regions to better equip itself to fight in this time and place. It will want those familiar with the seas, the mountains, extreme warmth, harsh coldness... The Harvesters are what you would call connoisseurs. They take only the best. The villages already plundered must have been superior at some aspect of survival. The ones to be taken will be as well." 

Gambit was about to reply, but a noise on the other side of the door caused the words to die on his lips. He motioned for a curious Mirrin to keep silent and pointed at the door. 

#_It is a woman_,# Mirrin spoke telepathically in Gambit's mind, careful, as always, to avoid contact with his mental shields. #_She is very distraught, but I also sense her concern for you._#

"Stormy, dat you?" Gambit called aloud. Ororo was skilled as a thief, but he was better. 

"I was just about to knock, Remy," Storm called from the other side of the door. "May I come in?"

Gambit looked at Mirrin, who nodded and then disappeared before his eyes. "Yeah, sure."

***

* * *

http://www.geocities.com/nikimarzione/ 


	3. Future Pluperfect 3: Battle

Future Pluperfect: Chapter 3 

* * *

Something was not right. That much was clear. But that's hardly novel. Something has not been right since I returned to this flonqing time.

"D'jya say somethin', sir?" Rahne Sinclair turned around to face Cable. 

"Just muttering to myself. It's a sign of creeping senility, or so I'm told," he replied. In her transitional form as she was, the girl's hearing was dangerously sharp.

"T'ain't that, I fear," Wolfsbane said as she sniffed the air. She had only been visiting Westchester to deliver some computer parts when the call had come in, so instead of returning to Muir Island she had flown down to the Mexican highlands. "T'is the smell a' the unfamiliar. Something is amiss."

"The question is what, my lupine associate," Henry McCoy said as he walked back from where he had been filling vials. "The CDC took water and soil samples, but while I can double-check their results, I am at a loss to come up with additional possibilities."

"Sirs, have yae taken anything from the... victims?" Rahne asked carefully. 

Looking over, Cable could see the young woman standing over what looked like a bloodstain in the dirt. 

"What is it, Wolfsbane?"

She paused, hesitant to bring up anything that would associate her with the more primal side of her wolf persona. "The blood... it smells wrong. It dinnae smell like the blood of a kill."

"It could be the toxins in the bloodstream," Beast mused aloud as he knelt by the spot. "Or it could be the de-oxygenation factor. Everyone here suffocated, after all."

Rahne shook her head. "It's nae poison. It's... I dinna know what it is."

"We'll look it over at the lab," Cable assured her. "They've also got the CDC doing tox screens on the victims. But that blood may not be from the townsfolk. It could be from the perpetrators."

The three went about their work mostly in silence. McCoy followed the young wolf-woman and collected samples where she paused and looked uneasy. He noticed that Cable was, too, looking more and more distant. 

"Pardon me for saying so, but your usual stoicism seems to have slipped into something more approaching saturnine," the blue-furred doctor said quietly as he finally approached his teammate. He didn't have much of a relationship with Cable and was not especially concerned that the other man would snap at him. "I know better than to think that you are merely perturbed by the scenery..."

"Especially since I've been the cause of a lot worse than this," Cable completed the thought. "I can't quite explain it. This attack... these attacks... they seem familiar to those that take place in my time. But why they would be happening now... but I can't shake the idea, at least not until we come up with a better one."

McCoy nodded and walked away, having, for once, nothing to say on the matter. Cable continued to wander around the village looking for possible sources of contamination, each step convincing him more thoroughly that there would be none. 

_Where's Blaquesmith when I need him? More precisely, when is he? I can't spend the time running an analysis of Haight's cyborg raids, especially if all this is going to be is some superimposed flashback on my part. The cyborgs aren't here, but just once, I'd like to hear it from Blaquesmith that I'm working myself so hard that I'm seeing things that aren't there._

Blaquesmith had departed abruptly a few weeks ago, barely leaving enough time for Nathan to answer the summons to the New York safe house and say G'Journey in person before the little man winked out and back to his own time. Blaquesmith claimed it was for equipment restocking, but Cable had his suspicions. 

In the meanwhile, however, he was left to his own devices. And a flonqing good job you're doing, Cable taunted himself. _This is probably a simple merc job, just a bunch of hired pros. Very good pros, but mercs always leave a marker. Trick of the trade - trademark your destruction for brand recognition. _

But if this was just a mercenary show, these weren't any mercs that had been around when the Six Pack had been operational. And anyone who hadn't been around then was still new to the job. But this wasn't the work of an inexperienced newbie just making a name for himself. This was quality destruction, which meant precisely one thing. Trouble.

***

"Goddess, not again!" Storm cried to herself as the wind shifted and the air was filled with the smell of death. Too many times, too many times...

The call had come in mid morning in Westchester, just after dawn here in New Mexico. A Pueblo village lay in ruins, discovered by their neighbors across the desert. This time, the corpses of the residents were desiccated, shriveled as though they had been left in the desert for weeks, although it had only been at most two days. The buzzards had been busy, but there was still flesh on bone.

"Look at this," Alex Summers called out as he picked up a large rock and handed it to his brother. "If I didn't know better, I'd say this looked like your work."

"There's no scoring on the side... that's not consistent with plasma weapons," Cyclops admitted as he looked over the rubble. "I'll take this back with us. Maybe something will turn up under a microscope."

"Or maybe Wolverine will smell something," Alex suggested, trying to make light of a situation that was only darkness. 

"Vampires, perhaps?" Storm walked over to the brothers. "I, especially, have had experience with them..."

"And were it not for this rubble, Storm, I'd be inclined to rely on that experience," Cyclops sighed, running a hand over his head. "But of all the times we've tangled with Dracula or his family, we've never seen evidence of a firefight."

"Lorna and I used to come here in the summers," Alex said as much to himself as to the others as he stood up from his crouch and looked out over the horizon, trying to decide whether the weight in his chest was from the memories of love lost or from the evidence of destruction that surrounded him. "This was a very prosperous village and every August they'd have a big festival to thank their gods for their good fortune. Where were their gods for this?" 

Ororo felt his gaze. "I was a goddess once. I did not brook questions out of fear that I did not know the answers. But that does not make the need for understanding disappear."

"Let's finish up here," Cyclops broke the silence that followed. "The folks from the reservation will want to come and perform their rituals for the dead."

The trio worked mostly in silence, collecting potential evidence and looking around for any sort of clue that might lead to those who had perpetuated the assault.

Alex drove them back to the area where the Blackbird had been parked, but after loading the up the plane, only one boarded. 

"I'd like to fly back on my own, if I may," Storm said when Cyclops motioned for her to precede him onto the ladder.

"It's a long way," he began, his mouth quirking more in concern than dismay.

"It should take me until shortly after nightfall," she replied. "It took me only a day to do a trans-Atlantic flight. I need time to myself to think. I shall not let my team down."

"Your next shift won't be for a few days, Storm, you've earned the downtime. Take your time and call in if you'd like to be picked up."

Storm nodded and with a quick hug for Alex, took off. 

"She'll be all right?" Alex Summers asked his brother.

"I hope. This is the second massacre she's had to investigate in two days. I didn't want her to come out here in the first place, but she insisted and everyone else was gone - even Gambit was off chasing rumors."

"You still chaining him to the back fence? You've never really been the grudge-bearing type."

"It's not me, although I suppose it is me because I'm not telling everyone to shut up and get over it," Scott Summers admitted with a frown. "We've been stretched so thin the past week or so, it's not going to matter what everyone thinks. Gambit's going to have to be included in the general rotation or everyone else is going to collapse from exhaustion. This way, nobody's going to have the time or the energy to snipe at him and I won't have to play 'bad cop' to get people to work with him."

"Sly of you, big brother. Quite sly."

"I'm too tired to be a dictator. If I dedicated the energy required to keep everyone's personality quirks from rubbing everyone else the wrong way, I'd have no energy for anything else."

"And then Jean really would replace you."

"Thanks. Thanks a lot."

"I'm making up for all the time I didn't get to be an annoying little brother back when we were teenagers."

"Funny, that's the excuse Nathan uses with Jean every time he sends me off the deep end."

"Then it's a family thing and I can't help myself."

Cyclops laughed, probably the first time he had in days. "Are you sure you don't want to come back with me? We've got extra space."

"I'm sure. I'll help you out if I can, but I'm not superhero material, Scott. I'm still a little too anti-establishment. Besides, from what Jean says, you couldn't take both me and Nathan."

"You I can deal with. Nathan? He's really not that bad if you catch him after a few cups of coffee. Or after he's cleaned his gun."

"You know us Summers boys and our toys. I'll catch you around, Scott. Let me know if anything comes out of that stuff we collected."

"Will do. I don't think we've ever seen anything like this, though. This is slaughter without a message - how often do you see that?"

"Senseless killing has been around since the dawn of time, I suspect. But I know what you mean. We have to be missing something."

Cyclops nodded slowly and with a pat on his brother's back, he boarded the Blackbird. Alex waited until the plane disappeared from the horizon before heading back to the jeep.

*** 

"Fair tidings, friend Gambit," Mirrin said quietly as she stood away from the tree she had been hiding behind. 

"What're you doing here, Askani?" Gambit growled, lowering his hand and willing the charge out of the card between his fingers. "I'm not alone, you know."

Mirrin shrugged, then pulled out a diskette. "I bring you possible information. Mayhaps I have divined the next sites of interest to the Kurioon."

"And how'd you do that?" Gambit looked around, but Wolverine was nowhere nearby.

"Do you really want to know?" 

"Non," he agreed. "You put it information on a disk?"

"It should be readable on your computers. I used the most basic computer language I had access to," she explained. Blaquesmith would have a fit once he returned and saw what she had done to his precious mainframe, but it was necessary both to get the results of the data analysis into a readable format as well as to obscure the disk and data's provenance - just in case Nathan got suspicious. 

"Suppose it's gonna be up to me to figure out a way to use the information without anyone knowing where I got it from?" Gambit asked rhetorically. "Can't just say I found it on the street, you know. They're gonna be suspicious."

"They are suspicious already, it is their nature," Mirrin replied airily. "Guilt by association is one of the hardest mistruths to eradicate." Left unspoken was how much a sign of a weak clan was this persistent mistrust. They'd be torn to shreds in a heartbeat in my there-and-then.

"An army will either watch each other's backs or stab them," Mirrin finished the thought aloud.

"Cyke's got my back," Gambit returned, feeling a little defensive about her blanket dismissal of the X-Men. "But he's gonna want to know why my bright idea," he waved the disk, "is better den anyone else's bright idea."

"Has anyone been so illuminated recently?"

"Non."

"Then your 'bright idea' shall shine all the more brilliant in the absence of competing flames."

"I guess so," Gambit agreed reluctantly, then jumped back a step when Mirrin suddenly disappeared. Turning around, he nearly collided with Wolverine. 

"Who're ya talkin' to?" The smaller man asked with a cocked eyebrow. 

"Personne," Gambit muttered, shaking his head. 

"Either you're lyin' or that time up in the snow froze your brain and yer seein' things," Wolverine half-snarled. "Whoever it was, you've met them before. I've caught that scent by your room and in the mansion. Who was it?"

Gambit thought fast. "Person who rescued me. Wanted ta make sure I was all right."

Wolverine nodded. It sounded plausible enough - the Cajun had been absolutely unwilling to talk about how he got back from Antarctica - and the nervousness he smelled was not the sort usually associated with lying. "This mysterious benefactor want anything from you?"

"Non. Jus' my acceptance back wit' de X-Men, would you believe."

"I'll think about whether or not I believe that. C'mon, I got what we came for."

***

"Oy gevalt."

"Did you say something, Katzchen?"

"Oy gevalt," Kitty Pryde announced, this time louder. She leaned forward so that her forehead rested on the gel pad she used as a wrist rest for her keyboard. Eyes closed, she could feel Lockheed's tail skim against her ankle. 

"The request from the mansion is proving too much?" Kurt Wagner stopped leaning against the monitor-room doorway and moved to sit down next to Kitty. 

"I've run every conceivable statistical analysis on the villages that have turned up massacred," Shadowcat sighed and sat up. Lockheed took the opportunity to climb onto his mistress' lap and nuzzle her hand. "Demographics, economics, average yearly rainfall, _everything_."

"And nothing?"

"And nothing. Not a single thing in common. One was good at farming, another hunting, another was known for their athletes, and the fourth, the one in Slovenia, wasn't good at anything."

"The Slovenians are hardy folk," Nightcrawler said with a smile of reminiscence. "A lot of good history takes place there. The gypsies have a high regard for them, as much as they like anyone who settles down."

"History... I wonder if that's it. Maybe they were once warriors or something. But how could I find that out? Cap's encyclopedias aren't nearly up to date and I've already bothered Moira enough."

Wagner smiled and sighed. "You know exactly how to find that out. You just won't."

"Piotr's not _that_ good in history. I'm sure the encyclopedia knows more."

"Kitty, you are being silly. European history was his specialty while he was a student of Professor Xavier's. If he doesn't know the answer, then he will know where to look. We are trying to save hundreds, maybe even thousands of people. He is your teammate."

"He's also the bane of my existence right now," Kitty mumbled and then sighed. "Fine, I'll ask him when I see him."

Wagner got up with a chuckle. "Good girl." 

After Nightcrawler left, Kitty frowned as she scratched the drowsy Lockheed's eye ridges. "I can't go talk to Piotr. You understand, don't you? The fates are cruel. Save the world or save my pride. Why couldn't Pete know more about history?"

At the mention of Wisdom, Lockheed's rumble of contentment turned into a snort.

"No editorializing, dragon."

Meanwhile, on his way to the kitchen, Kurt congratulated himself on fleeing the monitor room before Kitty could launch into another tirade. 

He loved both Colossus and Shadowcat dearly, he truly did, and he held them equally close to his heart. Both of them had risked their lives for his and he had and would do the same for them. _But that does not mean that I cannot occasionally wish to do them in myself._

Kurt sometimes wondered if he should be angry or not with Kitty for her bouts of unreasonableness. Still so young, the girl had been through so much that her biological age was oft just a technicality. Kitty Pryde had stopped being a child long before she had convinced Professor Xavier that she was too mature to be trained with the New Mutants. 

Yet he also wondered if Kitty did not use to her own advantage the guilt that all of her teammates felt for that stolen childhood. Kitty almost expected them - especially Piotr - to change as she changed, to treat her as the adult that she insisted she was. But Kurt, Wolverine, and especially Storm were also required to stay the same when she was comfortable as things were, to still be the nurturing buffers they had always been. And when the rest of the X-Men could not halt nature to suit her whims... Kitty's temper tantrums were a force of nature unto themselves. 

'The lass jus' needs a friend,' Moira had once told Kurt as the two had found themselves waiting out one such storm together. Perhaps it was so, but how do you tell that to someone who has lost all of her best friends so dramatically? 

Both Ilyana and Rachel had been so well-suited to Kitty - even in her most petulant mood, Kitty could not deny that both Magik and Phoenix had suffered more greatly than she had, and yet they were so eminently well-adjusted to 'normal' life. Even Doug Ramsay had managed to soothe Kitty's fury through his own terminally even temper. But they were all gone now, having sacrificed themselves for a greater good. And Kitty was left to rage alone.

Rahne was around now, but the two girls could not be further apart in temperament and there was too much history between the two. Rahne had confided to Kurt that even if Kitty managed to look past the fact that Rahne was a former 'X-Baby', she didn't think Kitty would ever forgive her for getting Doug killed, regardless of the actual circumstances. 

"Afternoon, Kurt. Would yae like some coffee?" Moira MacTaggert greeted him as he entered the kitchen. "I'm putting up a pot. I'm fallin' asleep over my notes again."

Kurt swallowed his shudder of revulsion. MacTaggert's coffee rivaled blue Kool-Aid as the most noxious substances officially labeled safe for human consumption. "No thank you, Moira, but I'm fine. Orange juice will do."

Finishing his glass of juice, Kurt noticed idly out the window that Meggan was frolicking with some ducks on the lawn. She had turned her top half green and her bottom half brown to blend in with her new friends. But when Kurt noticed that she had also taken on webbed feet, he decided it was a very good time for an early afternoon nap.

A while later, Kurt awoke to the distinctive sound of Wisdom shuffling down the stairs. Not wanting to think of why the man was in this wing and on this floor - his room was nowhere nearby, although Kitty's certainly was - he stretched and instead turned to the blinking phone that sat on his desk. Opening his door to officially put himself back on duty, he saw Lockheed walk by. 

Lockheed was on his way to his cushion for a nap when he passed by Piotr Rasputin's room. The door was open, so he decided to step in. Colossus, unlike Kitty's current amour, did not smell of cigarettes and did not threaten to kill him whenever Kitty was out of earshot. And he most certainly never kicked Lockheed out of his own room.

Were it not for the fact that Kitty would have been most upset, Lockheed was quite sure he could have enjoyed watching Colossus (_cooo!_) take on Wisdom (_nyaa!!_). It would have been especially nice had the organic steel giant been able to rid Kitty of her foul-smelling boyfriend.

Instead, Kitty was now even closer with mister hot fingers (_fthhppb!_) and not speaking to Piotr at all, except when it was absolutely unavoidable. And Kitty's ability to phase through walls to avoid her teammate made those times quite few, indeed.

"Privet, Lockheed," Piotr looked up after he heard the dragon clear his throat. "So you do not share Katya's feelings? Good. I am glad. Perhaps you could put in a few words with your mistress?"

Lockheed raised an eyebrow but went to the window ledge to catch the last of the sun's rays. 

Colossus continued to search through his books. He had gotten a post-it note with a request from Kitty scrawled on it to look up the history of a village, but he was having such little luck that he wondered if Kitty had not misspelled the name. That, or her handwriting was proving more troublesome than usual. 

"Do you know, Lockheed, that Katya used to have such lovely handwriting? I used to admire it when she would teach Ilyana the English alphabet. She would have had a beautiful Russian script had she ever learned it. But now? Now she only ever types at her keyboard and her hand is not nearly as fine. No flourishes, no elegance... no personality. It is as faceless as the printouts from her precious computers."

"You, mein freund, are a Luddite," Kurt Wagner announced from the open doorway. "I see Kitty has spoken to you about the village."

"If you call this," Piotr said as he waved the post-it attached to his right index finger, a wistful frown on his face, "a conversation. This was attached to my door when I got back from my workout."

Wagner sighed. If Kitty vacillated between selfless young woman and spoiled child, Piotr could choose equally well between invulnerable superhero and insecure wallflower. Now, as it had been since a few well-placed hot knives to the spine, Piotr was the latter. He hid in his room, did not speak unprovoked unless only Nightcrawler was around, and generally tried to blend in with the scenery. And that was no easier for an organic steel hulk than it was for an indigo-furred teleporter with a tail and three toes per foot. 

Kurt always suspected that Piotr, a temperamental artist buried under a lifetime of conditioning to fulfill duty to state and family, enjoyed being unhappy. Or, at the very least, Piotr had convinced himself that he enjoyed it. How else to explain things? He had been happy as Peter Nicholas, amnesiac SoHo artist, but that was the exception that proved the rule - Piotr had only been content when he had been somebody else. Kurt had watched Piotr tear himself to shreds over Kitty, then break up with her, then become murderously jealous when she finally moved on to another as Piotr had wished for her to do. 

_Of course, had Amanda moved on to Wisdom, I would most probably have not taken it much better than Piotr._

"Is there anything that I could say, Piotr?" Kurt finally asked. "It will take time."

And, truth be told, for all of Kitty's mood swings, she did have a right to be angry with Piotr. Attacking Wisdom had been stupid, beyond the fact that the former Black Air operative's mutation meant that he was naturally armed with dangerous weapons. Even if Kitty hadn't been in the right, what protest could Piotr lodge after what he had done to her in the wake of the Secret Wars? 

When they had returned from the Beyonder's universe, Kurt had gone along with Wolverine when he had dragged Piotr off that day on the pretense of making sure Logan didn't get the big Siberian killed. If Kurt were honest with himself, however, he would admit that he had been less offended at Logan's version of payback than he had made himself out to be. Suave, swashbuckling pirates lived by a certain code of conduct with the fair damsels, and Piotr had broken nearly every rule in the Errol Flynn Guide to Life. And one did not do that and still expect to get the girl. 

"Apparently I will have to wait," Piotr sighed, noticing his friend's distant expression, then looked behind him. "But at least Lockheed has agreed to be my friend."

"Good afternoon, Lockheed, I did not see you there," Nightcrawler apologized, bowing with a flourish. "Are either of you having any luck?"

"Nyet. Are you sure..."

A frantic call from the main level of the house, sounding suspiciously like Meggan-the-half-a-duck, interrupted the conversation. Wagner made his apologies and went towards the stairs. Lockheed decided to follow as the sun had faded beyond Colossus' ledge. 

"Kurt!" Piotr called after Nightcrawler. "The name of the village again, please?"

"Ljubdoren!"

"Spacebo," Colossus called back, figuring that distance had made his friend's voice sound so odd. 

"Always a motormouth when Pryde's not around," Pete Wisdom snarled as he exchanged stares with the dragon as they crossed on the steps.

***

* * *

back to the index


	4. Future Pluperfect 4: Old Friends, Older ...

Future Pluperfect: Chapter 4 

* * *

"We have a few ideas, but nothing that I'd like to base a mission on," Kurt Wagner said and shrugged at the video screen. "Piotr's off at the library looking up some things and we'll hopefully know more then."

"No hurry," the image of Cyclops seemed unperturbed. "We seem to have stumbled upon a few possible leads of our own. A contact of Gambit's has been most forthcoming and Remy's been able to work with what he has been given."

"Gambit? Kitty's going to be even more touchy to be around if she finds out that her technical expertise has been outmatched by a thief who once made a microwave explode," Nightcrawler chuckled. "What sort of information does he have?"

"A list of possible locations for future attacks. We're trying to find the common thread between them, as well as between those and the sites that were already hit. Speaking of, have you got anything new on the Slovenian village?"

"That's part of the reason Piotr's in Edinburgh at the university library, but as for the rest... Interpol hasn't come up with anything yet and the local authorities are just helpless. They're too busy trying to keep the neighboring villages both from looting and from starting rumors about vampires and werewolves. We're poking around on our own, but I don't know that we're going to come up with anything that Ororo, Logan, and Sam didn't spot while they were here working with us. Moira's running some tests and we'll let you know when they're done."

The conversation continued for a while longer, but with nothing more pertaining to the crisis at hand. At the outset, Cyclops had originally been surprised to see Nightcrawler as head of Excalibur, but in hindsight wondered why that was so. Perhaps it was the conversations he and Xavier had had back when Kurt had first become field leader of the X-Men. The Professor had described Kurt as able, if inexperienced and a little doubtful of his own tactical abilities. But both Scott and the Professor had always known that behind the swashbuckling lady's man (or was it lady's elf?) stood a man of utmost responsibility and devotion, so it should have been no shock to see Kurt put aside his lighthearted ways and accept the yoke of leadership. 

And that's what it was - a yoke. Dancing around the topic with a lightness of step that could be entirely attributed to the agile Nightcrawler, the two lead oxen could compare miseries and even bounce ideas off each other. And although Scott was sure that Kurt would consider these theoretical pas-de-deux as advice seeking, he was similarly sure that he got as much - if not more - out of them than did his counterpart. It required someone in a similar position of authority to understand the skill involved in learning from mistakes while trying to minimize them. 

Wolverine entered the monitor room as the two were comparing notes on who had a tougher job - Cyclops trying to re-integrate Gambit into the X-Men or Nightcrawler's attempts to reconcile Kitty (and Excalibur) with Colossus. It was a topic Wolverine could both understand and find ludicrous - both pariahed men had proved themselves enough times for him to be satisfied with their strength of character. But he wasn't most people. 

"This an exclusive bitch session, or can anyone join in?" Wolverine asked as he flipped the cap off of his beer bottle and tossed another one to Cyclops. He had only come looking for Summers after Jean had implored him to get her husband off-duty one way or another. And anything Jeannie wanted, Jeannie got. 

"Guten abend, Logan," Nightcrawler greeted him warmly, one side of his mouth quirking in a sly grin. "Long time, no see."

"I was already on your side of the pond, seemed as good a time as any," Logan said and shrugged as he put his boot-clad feet on the console, smiling inwardly as Cyclops frowned with disdain. Of course, he knew Scott was only upset because he liked to snack while on monitor duty and Logan was putting dirty boots on an otherwise prime eating surface. 

"Ya, but since you are a friend, there is no need for you to break in. Next time, use the doorbell and I guarantee you'll get a warmer reception. Or cooler one, as the case may be."

"You broke in?" Scott asked, only half-surprised, as he lifted his glasses and blasted the cap off of his beer bottle. Jean hated it when he did that - macho crap, she called it - but he was proud of the skill required to get the cap without creating a jagged edge on the bottle. It was a talent honed early on in his X-Men days, before Jean had arrived and tried to civilize them all.

"Don't want my friends gettin' hurt 'cuz they're gettin' complacent," Logan replied casually. "Tell Lockheed the hair grew back already."

_So it wasn't a new haircut Logan was sporting when he got back_, Scott mused to himself with a chuckle and made a mental note to tell Jean about it later, although he could feel vague curiosity about his sudden amusement from her end of the psychic rapport.

"Will do, mein freund, will do," Kurt yawned. "It is quite late on this side and it's been a long day. I shall speak to you both soon, ya?"

Everyone made their goodbyes and the monitor went blank. Neither Cyclops nor Wolverine moved, though. 

"You really going with the Cajun's story 'bout where he got that disk?"

Cyclops shrugged and sighed. "It's just plausible enough to be true and I don't want to get his hackles up by calling him a liar, especially if it's just a white one. I won't pretend I'm familiar enough with the... underworld... to know whether thieves would be friends with mercenaries."

"Mercs deal with both guilds. Cajun could just be protectin' his sources like he said. I don't think he's settin' us up, which would be the only reason to check out his story." 

"You're right. I'm going to have Nathan look over the stuff on the disk, since my son also has such... ties," Scott paused momentarily before the last word, but Logan could smell the irony mixed with pride and disbelief that often colored Cyclops' feelings towards Cable. "But at this stage of the game, it's not like we've got anything else with which to work."

"Speakin' of work, yer wife has proclaimed you 'off duty'."

"I can't leave the monitor unattended," Cyclops explained. "I'm covering for Warren so he can get some dinner."

"That ain't what he's gettin'" Logan chuckled as he remembered watching Archangel head off towards Betsy's room. "I'll watch the screen until the bluebird gets back. Say goodnight to Jeannie for me."

Scott laughed gently, drained his beer, and stood up. "I will. Thanks."

Logan nodded, but said nothing. 

***

"Gambit, wake up!"

"Huh? Que ce que fait ce passe? Askani?" He shook his head to clear the sleep from his eyes as he stopped reaching for the daggers he kept under his pillows. "What're you doing here?"

"The Harvesters are about to feed. Get dressed," Mirrin whispered as she searched the room for things he would need. 

"Let me get Cyclops or Storm..." Gambit swung out of bed and towards his closet. He could see the clock's reflection in the mirror. Half past four. 

"We don't have any time. Do you require arms?"

"You want to do this solo?" Gambit raised an eyebrow as he pushed his hair away from his face. "I got my cards and my staff. Anyt'ing else, I'll make do wit' what's around."

"That won't be sufficient for our task," Mirrin told him. "Finish readying yourself. I'll return presently."

Before Gambit could say anything, she disappeared. He debated going downstairs and getting Cyclops, or at least across the hall to get Wolverine, but before he could even finish pulling his cowl up over his jaw, Mirrin returned carrying a couple of rifles and a string of grenades. 

"You look like Rambo," Gambit said, swallowing a laugh but then grinning broadly when Mirrin looked at him askance. "A movie character. Sort of like Cable, 'xcept fake."

Mirrin nodded cautiously, then frowned. "Are you ready? I'm not as familiar with contemporary weaponry as I should be for this mission, so this was all I felt comfortable bringing." She had been poking around the safe house for days looking for weapons, but had only limited success. Dayspring kept his toys immaculate and ready for use, but he was notoriously lazy about putting things away, so it had apparently been up to Blaquesmith to keep the place clean. *And I'll be a pregnant har-gelding before I figure out his filing system.*

"Stuff's kinda old, you know dat?" Gambit picked up one of the rifles. "It's automatic, but we can get some plasma rifles downstairs that'll be much more effective."

"No plasma rifles," Mirrin insisted. "Energy-based weapons would counteract what we're trying to do." Nathan's predilection for the newest and biggest guns had made the supply of low-tech weaponry very limited.

"You know, you never got around to telling me exactly what we are going to do," Gambit said as Mirrin reached out for his arm. "Or how you keep bein' able to get past the mansion's security system."

"Cut short the feeding season," she replied. "The other is, shall we say, a trade secret." 

The room started to shimmer before Gambit could protest.

"Où sommes-nous?" He looked around. It was dark here, too, but whether it was the dark before the dawn or after dusk, he couldn't tell. It was cold, though, and the ground was rocky and bare. 

"Does it matter?" Mirrin handed him one of the rifles, eyes searching the craggy horizon for signs of movement.

"Call it idle curiosity," Gambit replied dryly as he checked over the gun he had been handed. It had been quite a while since he had bothered with such conventional weapons. Growing up, guns were the province of the Assassins, not the Thieves, although his father had forced him to learn how to shoot. Once his abilities manifested, however, Gambit had decided that there was no use in a gun when a deck of cards would do just as well, if not better. 

"Quebec," Mirrin whispered. "The nearest major population center is a place called Chibougamau."

"Least I speak the language 'ere," he mumbled to himself. 

Mirrin stood next to him, eyes closed. The local population was still safe, although it would be easier if they stayed out of the fighting. A telepathic push to sleep should be sufficient. With almost everyone already unconscious, a slight nudge was all it took. Once they were taken care of, she scanned the area for others. Harvesters, unlike the Kurioon soldiers, were easy to spot. "There are about a dozen here," Mirrin said opened her eyes. "They have already spread out, so we shall have to split up. At least they have not yet begun to feed."

"Still haven't told me what I'm looking for," Gambit pointed out. "Will I even be able to tell a 'Harvester' from a civilian in the dark?"

Mirrin nodded and reached out for Gambit's arm. A moment later, they were next to a building. "There, that is one of our quarry."

Gambit looked. Across the street, a young man walked. He would have looked like an accountant on an off day except for the golden claw that was where his right hand should have been. 

#_You have to aim for the head_,# Mirrin telepathically as she raised the rifle. #_They are implanted with transmitters and will inform the others if they are attacked or impaired._#

One shot later, the Harvester lay on the ground, his head blown apart. 

Mirrin turned to Gambit. "The Harvester tracking signals are sent out every ten minutes to collect data and update instructions. We have until the next such wave to improve our odds once we are discovered."

"Dis don't sound too good," Gambit told her.

"They are not very good fighters," Mirrin scoffed mildly. "But their stamina and durability are impressive. Close combat should be avoided at all costs - once that claw touches skin, there is no way to stop or reverse the damage."

"What does dat claw do?"

"It absorbs life force, converting it into storable energy. The Harvesters don't stop until their source is drained dry."

"Which is death."

"Precisely," Mirrin confirmed. "Your skills as a thief should serve well to surprise the remaining Harvesters. We shall keep in contact telepathically."

"Harvesters aren't psis, are they?"

"They are not even human. Their exterior is for aesthetics only, it neither feels nor acts as real skin. Should you get close enough, you'll see for yourself. Harvesters are early cyborg prototypes, robots really. They have relatively poor defense capabilities and do not process new information on their own. Their brains, so to speak, are low-grade processors. Enough to act, not enough to react. 

"Once we are discovered, their plan of retaliation will not be a complex one, no matter who is controlling them - the Harvesters are not combat machines and cannot implement most tactical schemes. They are used at all only because the machinery is already existing and easy to store and assemble."

"But you found them wit' your telepathy," Gambit pointed out. 

"It's a fault in their programming, one that was corrected by the time Haight's men created the Kurioon. The Harvesters transmit and receive information much in the same fashion a telepath would, except it is similar to a radio signal. A trained telepath can trace the signal as a homing beacon, but only a few could understand the message. I cannot." Mirrin said, then frowned. "We are wasting precious moments. I will satisfy your curiosity after we are returned safely to your quarters."

Gambit found himself wandering the streets of the tiny town, rifle at the ready. His own instincts and training kept him on the lookout for any movement - in a place like this, anyone out at this hour was doing something wrong. Not excluding himself and his mysterious partner. 

He had taken down two with three shots before a voice in his head warned him that the next information wave had passed and the Harvesters would, at the very least, be aware that their number had been thinned. 

Running across the street to the warehouse to better avoid the gusting wind, Gambit saw the glow of a golden claw in the starlight and brought the rifle up to get the Harvester in his sights. It was not until he was out of the whistle of the wind that he heard the steps behind him, just in time to see another claw inches from his shoulder.

Spinning away from his would-be assailant, instinct took over and two small knives were charged and thrown before Gambit remembered Mirrin's warning about energy-based weapons. The Harvester's eyes, a dull green glow, flashed bright emerald with the impact of the knives in its forehead and the Harvester seemed renewed instead of repelled. 

The claw reached out once more, backing Gambit up against the warehouse wall, before it fell away with the sound of a firing gun. As the body fell, Gambit could see a non-plussed Mirrin checking the artillery supply. 

"Oath! Is it your instinct in battle to always do that which will help you the least and harm you the most?" She hissed. "These Harvesters may lack the mental acuity of a kilap tree, but even they will not fail when presented with such a gift. Harvesters do not leave survivors, Gambit, and as you have seen, they do not let anyone escape."

Gambit only nodded. He knew she was correct. It had been too long since his last test beyond the Danger Room. Before Antarctica... And once again, he found himself chasing Rogue, or at least her brethren in powers. _Right now, I don't think she'd be giving me any more mercy than these robots_. "How many more left?" 

"Four. None nearby, although... Ahhh!" Mirrin sank to her knees, eyes squeezed tight shut. A deep breath, then she looked up at the concerned Gambit. "They have begun to feed."

"Den it's time we stopped playin' hide-and-seek, hein?" He offered Mirrin a hand up and felt the air shimmer before she let go. They were on the other side of the small town, judging by the position of the tall buildings. 

"The first house," Mirrin pointed. The two silently entered the open front door. "Upstairs." In the three bedrooms, parents, grandparents, and children lay dead. 

"Dey look peaceful, like it was natural," Gambit mused aloud. "Yet how come the villages were so... brutalized?"

"Mutilation comes afterwards. Usually, it is a method of training the soldiers, not an effect of the Harvesters' thievery," she looked at the bodies impassively. "Although, truth be told, sometimes the baseness of ordinary man rivals the programmed cruelty of machines. Looters of all sorts come to feed after the Harvesters have quenched their thirst."

Finding the four remaining Harvesters, eyes already glowing bright green in sated glory, was easy enough. Like hunting overfed foxes. Gambit charged the bodies until they melted into unrecognizable lumps and Mirrin transported them to the junkyard away from the town center. Finally, as dawn broke over the horizon, the two disappeared and then reappeared in Gambit's room. 

"I thank you, friend Gambit, for your aid," Mirrin said formally. "I pray that you still have time to rest before your day begins."

"A little while," he admitted, noticing that only an hour had passed according to the clock, although it had felt like much longer. He threw his duster on the back of the chair. "Guess I'll be seein' you around." It wasn't a question, more a statement of fact. Gambit knew his debt was not nearly paid. 

"Bright Lady willing, in more pleasant circumstances," Mirrin agreed. "Dream peacefully, then." 

Gambit was going to ask about the odd coincidence that not a single person in the town had awoken while they were shooting rifles and dragging metal carcasses down the streets, but Mirrin disappeared. Just as well, he thought he knew the answer anyway, just as he knew that Mirrin would be doing her best to avoid fulfilling her promise to answer questions. 

As Gambit returned to bed in Westchester, Mirrin found her rest for the first time that long day in midtown, bunking down as she was in Nathan's safe house. It was an architectural and technological hurricane, but the component parts were almost all of the thirty-eighth century. As such, Mirrin felt more at home among the dissonant artifacts than she had anywhere else in this here-and-now. 

As she had every night that she had stayed here, Mirrin stifled a giggle as she climbed into the massive bed. _Nathan is a big boy, so he needs a big bed._, she mused. _That said, Tetherblood would have a lot to say about a luxury of this proportion were he to see it. Most of his commentary would probably involve a harem and cuffs on the bedposts, no doubt..._ The room, large bed notwithstanding, was actually more along the Spartan lines that Mirrin would associate with Nathan. 

Mirrin found it perverse that she could rest so comfortably here. While the bed was a good deal more comfortable than any sleeping pallet the Clan Chosen might have - life on the run didn't come with accessories - the psionic aura of the room, of the whole living area in general, was unsettling. But it was unsettling in a way that Mirrin was accustomed to - Nathan's grief - and she tried not to focus on how easily she could apparently tune that out. 

There were no photos here, so Mirrin didn't precisely know what Nathan looked like in this time. She knew that he had come back to this here-and-now from a much later point in the timestream than she had, so he would be much older than she was instead of only the little bit that 'should' have been. 

Mirrin freely admitted to being curious about how Nathan looked in his middle years and whether time could possibly heal some of the myriad of soul-deep wounds he carried. Treasured, were either of them to be honest about it. She knew what his mission was in this time and place, knew of its costs and its necessity and wondered if the weight would prove crushing. Only the Mother Askani could ask the child who had slain Apocalypse for an encore. 

***

"Betsy, look at these printouts," Jean Grey-Summers called out as she waved a collection of papers at Psylocke as she walked into the kitchen. "According to these, I've been missing an anomaly on the astral plane, but I watched as these graphs were being produced and I didn't feel a thing."

Psylocke put down her teacup. "I was going to ask you about something similar. The reports from overnight indicate some sort of action, but Cerebro not only couldn't identify the source, it also couldn't identify the type of activity. I was wondering whether the poor things needs a recalibration."

"Or maybe a vacation," Bobby Drake muttered as he sat down with his cereal. "That thing hasn't been used so much since Professor Xavier just had the five of us to worry about."

"Maybe you're right. I'll get Forge to do a remote diagnostic today," Jean agreed, giving Bobby cause to frown as she was obviously taking his sarcasm seriously. "Otherwise, I take it we escaped the night without any more disasters?"

"First one in a while," Betsy confirmed and then looked over Jean's shoulder. "Good morning, Remy. Pardon me for saying so, but you look like you didn't sleep too well last night."

Gambit shrugged as he combed his fingers through his hair to keep it back. "Strange dreams. T'ink I've been on monitor duty too long. I'm seein' attacks in my sleep."

"Well, I don't see why you can't get into the rotation like everyone else," Jean replied, having discussed just that with Scott last night. Then a thought struck. "What sort of battles were you seeing in your dreams?"

_Uh-oh_. "Dunno," Gambit tried to sound casual and shrugged artlessly, concentrating on shielding from the two telepaths. He knew he was not easy to scan, but now would not be a good time to rely on that bit of astral fortune. "We got that message from my source, plus the footage of the ruined villages... I t'ink I'm just creating possible scenarios out of nothing. Like when you watch horror movies before you go to bed."

"Could be, but if Forge can't find anything wrong with Cerebro, I'd like you to tell me about your dream, if you can," Jean said slowly. "We've got some strange readings from last night that we can't make heads or tails out of."

"D'accord," Gambit agreed, then moved towards the coffee maker. 

The two telepaths exchanged a glance behind his back. 

#_You don't think maybe Gambit's dream was related to Cerebro's reports, do you?_# Psylocke asked Phoenix.

#_It could be. We're at a point where we really have to investigate all possibilities._#

#_Including the one that says that maybe Gambit's not dreaming? He's hiding something from us, Jean, I can see that even though he's shielding. And this really shouldn't be a time when he starts hiding things from us again._#

Jean could see Betsy's thoughts colored by her emotions towards Warren, a lingering suspicion born out of the mental and physical scars Angel still bore from losing his wings and his stint as Death. #_He's hiding something, that's for certain, but Remy's not obligated to tell us everything. We all have our secrets and our shames._#

"D'you want me to leave de room so you two can continue out loud?" Gambit asked. It wasn't hard to tell when a telepathic conversation was going on. "Or should Drake come wit' me?"

Both women flushed with embarrassment. "That won't be necessary, Remy," Betsy apologized. "Jean and I will mind our manners."

"You might as well talk out loud," Bobby sighed. "It's not like I'm doing too well understanding anything the female of the species says right now."

"Gambit, however, has no such problems," Jean replied with a smile. "I'm sorry, Remy."

Gambit nodded. "C'mon frère, I'll give you some translation lessons in the Danger Room."

***

* * *

http://www.geocities.com/nikimarzione/ 


	5. Future Pluperfect 5: Who Do You Trust

Future Pluperfect: Chapter 5 

* * *

_What am I doing here? Oh, yeah, right. Me and my big mouth. "Where and when, Big Boy. Where and when." Nathan, you owe me._

The message had come to her in Monrovia, halfway through some relatively routine damage doing. Well-paying damage doing. The kind that one didn't normally want to hurry through, lest it not be done right and future similarly well-paying gigs be directed elsewhere. 

But it had come. How, Domino wasn't sure. She strongly suspected that someone short, brown, and answering to the name Blaquesmith was involved, but, well, anything involving Nate meant that one should never close the door on any possibilities. 

She'd shoot herself before admitting that it was precisely that reason that she had come to Canada. As much to help as to see if the door was still open on one particular possibility.

_I don't **need** him. In fact, my blood pressure has probably dropped fifty points since the last time I saw him. But there are times when it would be nice to have him around. He'd have gotten a big kick out of the job in Jakarta. And I could have used a little TK in Mali. And, well, maybe I miss him a little. Not a lot. Not enough to pick up a phone and try to track him down. Just enough to come when he calls. _

And so here she was, stepping off a streetcar in downtown Toronto almost exactly one year after telling Nate to go flonq himself one last time. The directions had been specific, but they obviously described the scenic route to the destination. Go to Chinatown, Dundas Street West and Bathurst, through the park towards the black building, down Ryerson, around the corner and a few houses in... nobody answered the doorbell. 

Looking at her watch, Domino noted that she was a little early and decided to wait a few minutes before indulging in anything so petty (and satisfying) as personal property damage. Sitting down on the stoop, she waited, one hand resting in the pocket of her coat that held a handgun. 

All of a sudden, a buzzing in her head caused Domino to stand up. Like a radio suddenly being tuned it, emotions suddenly flooded her system and it was all she could do to capture them and remember that they weren't her own. _The psi-link? Wasn't that broken and we 'forgot' to fix it?!?_ Exhaustion, frustration, and pain poured through, plus that weird slightly happy thing that she knew from past experience went along with the humming of Sinatra songs.

"What are **you** doing here?"

"Nice to see you, too, Nate," Domino drawled as Cable came up the walk carrying a grocery bag. 

"Not that I'm not happy to see you," he hastily corrected, clasping her shoulder and planting a peck on the check, all the while looking around to see if anyone noticed that the paper bag was floating in mid-air as he opened the screen door and waited for the psi-scan to complete and the door to unlock. "I'm just surprised. I thought you were in parts unknown." 

"I was," Domino confirmed as she followed the floating bag inside. "Until I got a telegram in Askaniglish asking me to show up here."

"Askaniglish?" 

"You know, that strange version of English you revert to when you start hanging out with Blaquesmith too much."

"I know what you meant," Nathan replied with some exasperation. "But I don't know who could have sent it. Blaquesmith's not here-and-now and I didn't do it."

"So I just came halfway around the world for a prank?" Dom fumed as she sat down on the arm of a couch. "But... the message... the only reason I bothered with it in the first place was because it sounded too much like you to be anyone else. It had stuff in it that only you would know."

Cable was silent and Domino could swear she heard the gears turning inside his head. 

"Earth to Nate? Come in Nate?"

"There's something going on," he finally spoke aloud, sounding quite distracted.

One eyebrow shot up in amusement. "When is there not?"

"This is one too many coincidences for my liking," he continued, still talking to himself as much as her. "I think it's time to stop in and visit the folks."

"So then I can go back to doing what I was doing, right?" She asked. Part of her was relieved - she had feared the worst when the message had come, for what else but the worst could force either Cable or Blaquesmith to summon her? And the rest of her crestfallen that her re-appearance hadn't done anything to shake Nathan out of the distracted trance he had spent so much time in before the last time that had gone their separate ways. The trance that had, in fact, been most of the reason they had chosen to go their separate ways. _Well, **I** chose, Nate just went along with it uncomplainingly._ "Catch the next flight outta Pearson?"

"If you have to... I don't want you to lose a job over this... especially since I don't know what **this** is..." Cable trailed off and looked at the wall behind Domino. He looked at the floor before her. Eventually, he knew, he'd get around to looking at her. But that would entail thinking about other things. 

Such as trying to come up with a good reason why the psi-link that had broken so long ago was suddenly up and running (and why the jangly buzz that was Dom at her most sarcastically bemused was echoing in the back of his head). 

Such as how to dance around apologizing for driving her away. Again. Not that Dom was expecting one. She knew him too well for that.

Such as how much he realized he missed Domino (again) now that she was standing before him. Not that he'd ever 'fess up to that. Certainly not to the lady in question. She'd get all squirrelly. Or was it rabbity? 

"You're going out on me again, Nathan," Domino warned. 

All of a sudden, Nathan grinned lopsidedly. "Come along? To Westchester. We can freak out Scott and Jean, maybe blow a few things up if we ever figure out what's doing all the damage..." 

"You offered me something similar a lot longer ago than either of us would like to think about," she said with a shake of her head. "And I'm still regretting it." 

But not enough to not go along and this Nathan knew. 

It wasn't an apology. It may not even mean anything other than a shared love of shit-disturbing anything X-related. But it was more than nothing. And sometimes that was a start. 

***

Finally, she was free. _I shouldn't be thinking like that. I may not have much experience in the relationship department, but nobody should feel relieved at ditching their boyfriend._ Nonetheless, Rogue couldn't suppress the surge of relief that flooded her system as she moved down the stairs towards the basement complex. 

With the craziness surrounding the recent attacks, no effort had been required in making time for herself away from Joseph. _Be honest, girl, you mean avoiding him. _But now, with things having calmed down slightly and some sort of rough schedule back in place, care had to be taken. Rogue didn't want to drive him away, not yet at least, but she needed time to think.  
There had been precisely two men to gain admittance to the most precious part of Rogue's heart, Erik Magnus Lehnsherr and Remy LeBeau. Both men with a past they couldn't shake, both hard to hold even in the present. She had, perhaps foolishly, believed that she could change both men enough so that their futures would make them easier to grasp. She had been wrong, dramatically so, in both cases. But now, it seemed, both men were giving her second chances. Unfortunately, they were doing so simultaneously. 

After going through the Siege Perilous, Rogue's life had been saved by Magneto. His reasons, he had said, were absolutely pragmatic. But in the time that had followed in the Savage Land, Rogue had wondered about the sincerity of those comments, never more so than that final afternoon in the battle with Zaladane. She had grown to be able to read Magnus' expressions (and he was 'Magnus' by then, not Magneto, although she liked 'Erik' better) and she saw how torn he was about driving her away. It may not have been love, but he certainly felt **something**. And then it was gone. 

In the time that had followed her return to the X-Men, Rogue had lay awake many a night wondering whether, had there been no Zaladane, Magnus could have been as he once was, back before the Morlock Massacre. When he was gentle and remorseful and... well, human. But then had come Dallas and then Australia and then Inferno and then the Legacy Virus and then Acolytes. And by that point, there had been too much time and Magnus was too filled with rage to be anyone but Magneto. 

But then came Joseph. Rogue honestly didn't know if Joseph appreciated her position. Or his own. He should have been Magneto as he might have been, Magnus without a Holocaust to serve as crucible. But he wasn't. Magneto completely without anger wasn't Magnus, he was Joseph. And Rogue wasn't sure she liked Joseph as much as she had Magnus. Or, now that he was back, Remy. 

Remy. Now there was a walking conundrum. After the kiss in Israel, Rogue thought she finally knew him. She saw his thoughts, felt his emotions, traveled miles beyond mere intimacy. It had been an experience, one that (while informative) she wasn't keen on repeating. 

But she did, in Antarctica. And then there were no more secrets. 

For a long time, Rogue had blamed Remy. Why else would she have left him in the snow, why else would she have said those terrible words if she wasn't operating under the influence of Gambit's psyche? How could she have left the man she loved to die, broken and broken-hearted, if she had been in her right mind? If the damned man had had the courage to tell her the truth in the first place, if he hadn't fought so hard to keep his secrets from her, then maybe Rogue would have handled the transfer better. 

But she didn't. And then there was no more Remy. Or so she thought. 

It had been Logan - who else but that hairy little harbinger of dirty truths? - who had first broached the topic with Rogue. Wondered out loud about second chances and the X-Men's oath to preserve life and then, halfway into a too-graphic description of just how long it took for a body to freeze to death (he'd almost done it a few times, apparently), he started telling the story of how Bobby and Hank and the others had shaken Warren out of his conditioning as Death. Logan had gotten some of the facts wrong - Bobby had previously told her the story and she trusted Drake's first-hand account - but he had gotten the point across. Warren had been shocked into sobriety when he thought he had killed his friend. Rogue, on the other hand, was still living in denial long after Remy's body should have turned into a Popsicle. 

But, of course, Remy never turned into a Popsicle. The luck of the X-Men being what it was, one of the seemingly endless casts of characters from Cable's past-present-future had decided that Gambit was a good tool and had recycled him. 

And now here he was. 

Remy was acting once more like a thief, Rogue had realized. He had come back and started picking up the pieces of his life that were lying shattered under the feet of everyone else. But only the pieces that no one would miss trampling on. Nothing to cause a stir. He was going off to Harry's with Wolverine and Sam, spending hours in Ororo's attic, working out in the Danger Room and smoking up on the roof. But there were no early morning arrivals with the motorcycle getting walked up the drive. There was no flirting with Jean in front of Scott or with Betsy before Warren. The result was somewhat ghostlike. 

Not that Rogue would really know. She'd hardly seen the man since he had returned. But the grapevine had borne its gossipy fruits. 

"Who's in the Danger Room," she asked as she entered the control room. Storm was at the console, brow furrowed as she sat 'spotting' whomever was down below. 

"Gambit," Ororo replied neutrally, swallowing the urge to say anything else. It was easier to practice forgiveness towards Rogue - a forgiveness Remy had begged her to accept - when she was not confronted with the evidence of why that forgiveness was necessary in the first place. 

Rogue nodded and sat down to watch and wait. 

To the casual observer, of which the aforementioned grapevine was one, Gambit was almost back to normal. He had put on weight, if anything he was physically stronger than he had been before Antarctica, and his sense of humor would make an occasion appearance before a select audience. The other morning, Betsy and Jean had nearly died of laughter trying to recount what had gone on while they had gone to the farmer's market with Remy and Bobby. 

But neither woman in the control room was a casual observer. Gambit had regained most of his lost pounds, but they were purely in muscle and both women had noticed that Remy's features had not regained the softness that they had been privy to see, the softness that only appeared when he was 'Remy' and not 'Gambit'. His moves in the Danger Room below were as powerful and as graceful as ever, but they were not done with their usual joy. Instead of echoing the man's pleasure in his own skill, they bore a desperation that had never previously existed. 

Rogue felt her heart squeeze as she watched the scene below. She had avoided Remy whenever she could, telling people that she was afraid of what she might say or do. But in reality, she was afraid of what she might see if she looked at him too closely. And now, confronted with her worst fears come true, Rogue didn't know what to do. 

"Man's always been too vain for his own good," she finally whispered aloud, knowing Storm would understand what she meant. Remy was beautiful, he always had been, and here he was hiding his scars on the inside where they wouldn't mar the perfect surface. Where they could then fester and corrode because nobody would know to look for them. 

After Israel, Rogue had known to look. After Antarctica, she knew exactly where each scar was and how deeply it ran. 

Ororo nodded silently, both at Rogue's comment and, secretly, at her own successful plan. She had known who was scheduled for the Danger Room after Gambit when she had neglected to turn the sign on the control room door from 'vacant' to 'in use'. Rogue always liked to stop by early if she was running a program and Ororo figured that she would be early enough to catch Remy in action. 

Rogue's appreciation of the significance of what she was seeing pleased Ororo in that it meant that the woman was not as hard-hearted as she looked, that perhaps Remy's faith in her was not misplaced. The next step, however, was up to Rogue. 

"Oh mah god," Rogue gasped and clasped her hand to her mouth. "He's using **that** program. Ah thought Ah'd deleted it..." _That damned man. I damned him. Why is he doing this to me... or can I stop being self-centered enough to realize that maybe he's too intent on doing to himself?_

Below, Gambit fought on, unawares of what was going on in the control room. The Alley stretched on before him, the Morlocks fleeing behind. And there, around the tunnel corner, stood the remaining Marauders: Harpoon, Sabretooth, Vertigo, and Blockbuster. The others had been dispatched already. 

Ororo had unceremoniously deleted some of the modifications Remy had made to Rogue's semi-secret program - she had refused to let Gambit face a doppelganger killing for the Marauders and she had erased all traces of a battle between Harpoon and Angel. "You may battle your demons, Remy, but I will not let you wallow in guilt that is not yours to accept," she had whispered to herself as she had set up the program. He would be upset, but he wouldn't say anything to her afterwards.

Rogue got up suddenly. _It's like Carol Danvers all over again. I've caused a living death and it's being thrown back in my face. He's a ghost and I've killed him. He's not 'almost back to normal'. He's nowhere near normal. Ororo knows it. And she wants me to, as well. "_Ah'll be back in a few minutes." She needed time to think about this later, but right now, she needed time to clear her head before her own session. Else she'd not live long enough to figure out what to do with Remy. 

Ororo nodded again, left to herself once more. It was, she decided, quite amazing how much could be accomplished while only speaking one word.

***

"Have the labs turned up anything?" Cable asked Cyclops.

They were standing around the table in the War Room, looking down on a wide spread of papers, maps, and printouts. Domino still wasn't sure what to make of their reception - or lack thereof. There had been a total lack of surprise when the two of them pulled up. Nobody had asked why they were there, why Domino was with him, or if something was wrong. That alone should have tipped her off. Summerses, as a rule, didn't visit casually. 

"Nothing we can use. There are no fingerprints, no recognizable boot marks, nothing left behind, no clues whatsoever about who's behind the attacks," Cyclops replied with a frown. 

Domino had been out of the loop for most of the incidents, either on the job in Monrovia (there had been one bar with CNN on, but it had been the business report and she hadn't been that interested in emerging tech stocks) or en route to Toronto. But the bit she had caught during the layover at de Gaulle hadn't been anywhere near the real truth. For once, the media hype machine was playing down the damage. 

"This isn't anyone on the merc circuit," she confirmed, skimming over a fat binder of reports. "If it was, we'd all have been out of business a while ago."

"That's what I figured," Cable agreed, reaching for the thermos of coffee and pouring himself a refill before picking up a map marked with tiny neon pink flags. "It also looks like the work of mutants. Cerebro pick anything up?"

Jean shook her head no. 

"We're checking around with the Hellfire Club and the Brotherhood, but so far, nothing's come up," Iceman added. 

"You didn't think they'd just volunteer that sort of information, did you?"

"Give us a little credit," Wolverine snarled, sitting down heavily in one of the chairs. He had not been there when they had arrived, but apparently had returned to the mansion in the interim. "We didn't take their word for it."

Jean gestured towards a printout. "Did you show him Gambit's disk?" 

Cyclops picked up the paper and handed it over. 

"Where did you get this list?" Cable asked as he skimmed. 

"Gambit's connections," Scott explained vaguely, knowing how unsatisfactory an explanation that was. "And don't ask where Gambit got it; I don't know."

Cable looked over the message, a vague explanatory paragraph followed by a list of locations. Villages in Myanmar, Belize, the Ukraine, Chad...

"Oath! I should have known," Nathan suddenly spat out, slamming his coffee cup down. It was empty and thus didn't make a mess when it tipped over. "I did know. I just didn't trust myself to believe. Flonq it all! I could have stopped this..."

"Nathan?" Jean interrupted what she was sure was going to be a long trail of self-flagellating invective. 

Cable looked up blankly as if just seeing her for the first time. 

"Beat yourself up later, explain to us now," Domino prodded. 

"Evensea Isthmus is on this list," he sighed, combing his fingers through his hair. 

"You know where that is?" Wolverine asked. Logan considered himself an advanced world traveler - even an intergalactic and interdimensional traveler - and had been stumped by the location. The atlas had proven no wiser. 

"It's called Corinth in this time," Cable sighed. "I don't know when the name-change took place... will take place... but it's Evensea Isthmus by my own time."

"And you obviously have a theory behind this chronologically aberrant nominalism," Hank McCoy prompted. He had been in the lab, as the white coat might indicate, and was leaning against the doorway. 

Not that Domino minded McCoy all that much, but the whole situation was reminding her of why she had liked having X-Force as far away from the main team as possible - everything turned into a coffee klatch. 

"Cyborgs," Cable replied darkly. 

"We're reliving 'Terminator'?" Drake asked skeptically. _Of course, I'm sitting here talking to the half-metal man from the future himself, so..._

"In my time, the elite units of the Canaanite armies are made up of cyborgs. Dog soldiers. Hard to outwit, harder to outrun, and almost impossible to defeat."

"But why would they be here?"

"I'm going to find that out," Nathan ground out. He turned on his heel and gestured to Domino to follow him. She bit back the urge to bark her obedience. Eight hours together and she was back to being an accessory. So much for a change. 

"I'll be in contact presently."

"Nathan, wait," Jean called after them, but to no avail.

"Don't look at me like that," Cyclops spoke over his shoulder to his wife as he started typing on the computer mounted into the wall. "He didn't get his enigmatic bent from my side of the gene pool."

***

"So you redecorated," Domino said too casually as she walked through the door of the safe house. "I suppose I should be honored that you've decided to let me see it." It came out a little more bitterly than she meant it to sound. Not that she wasn't bitter, just that she didn't want to show her hand so quickly. 

"You've already seen the Toronto one," Nathan replied and shrugged, sensing Domino's irritation but not wanting to deal with it just yet. Past experience had shown that she'd still be just as pissed after he started the computer program and then she could have his full attention. "Although I'm obviously going to have to relocate it if someone knows about the location."

"Are you sure it wasn't Blaquesmith who sent the telegram?"

"It couldn't have been. He's been out of this time for weeks."

"The little marionette master left you alone?" Domino raised an eyebrow as she sat down next to Nathan at a massive computer console.

"Strange though that may seem, yes," Cable replied dryly. "He said it was an emergency equipment run, but he didn't sound very convincing then, and now, well..."

"Could it be that perhaps he just went off to another of your little hideaways so that he could do his thing without you suspecting it? Or that someone else got into one of them and is stringing you along?"

"The only ones that anyone could break into don't have any useful information in them, just a bed and a few spare guns and rations," he explained. "But the logs don't indicate anything out of the ordinary. Nobody's been playing around on the system. The last major activity was the replication of some Askani robes... huh. Blaquesmith must have wanted to go home in formalwear."

"It's not hard to erase activity records, Nathan," Domino reminded him with a sour expression as she sat up and pointed at the screen. "We've done it ourselves enough times."

"Not on this operating system. It wasn't designed by either of us and there are still features that we don't understand. It took years just to disable the Askani calendar reset... What are you laughing at?"

"I'm just picturing Blaquesmith trying to keep you from blowing this thing up when you couldn't make it do what you wanted." 

"I wouldn't have blown it up."

"Try that line out on someone else. I've watched you take out your frustration with the regularity of sunrises on too many alarm clocks."

"Those are alarm clocks. This is irreplaceable machinery."

"Since when has that bothered you?"

A beep from the monitor caused Cable to lean forward and return to whatever he was doing. Unable to make out the Askani on the screen and tired of waiting for a translation from Nathan that was not forthcoming, Domino got up to walk around. 

_So what am I doing here again? Watching Nathan ignore me. Have we not seen this sequel more times than we'd like to count? The ending doesn't change. It never does... But something is different this time. Nate asked me to tag along while he takes care of the very sort of crap that he insisted he had to do alone. The same Mission he didn't want to involve others (me) in because it would only get us hurt and it wasn't our fight. But instead of offering to drop me off at the nearest airport (and we've been in two today), he's handing me menus from the local Thai place. _

Maybe he's getting his kicks out of pissing off the X-Men and doesn't need to yank my chain. Maybe he hasn't figured out that I'm still here. Maybe I'm his replacement conspirator since Blaquesmith's gone. Or maybe he's been replaced and this is really pod-person Nathan...

#Or maybe I just trust you, Dom, and think I could use your help. You said you were free...# 

"Okay, I'm definitely going with the pod-person theory. Who are you and what did you do with Nathan?" Domino called back into the other room. 

She felt amusement trickle down the psi-link. _#I'm hurt. You don't believe me.#_

"Give me one good reason, buster." 

No sooner were the words out of her mouth than did images appear in her mind's eye. A few missions from their Six Pack days, a few more private ones that made her cheeks flame.

_Make sure none of those are of Copycat, _she thought, careful to keep shielded. 

"Oath, Dom, I thought we'd gotten past that," Nathan sighed regretfully, eyes closed. 

"You sneaking inside my head, Summers?" Domino asked, much closer than Nathan thought she was. 

"No, but I can tell what you're thinking by the color of what you're letting through the link," he replied almost mournfully. "I'm sorry, Dom."

"I know you are, Big Boy," she sighed and sat down again next to him, resting a hand on his arm to solidify her words. "I guess it was my turn to check the gift horse's teeth." _For once, Dom, just enjoy the fact that the two of you are together without being shot at... yet._

"If you want to see what I'm looking at, the monitor on the left should be running the translation program," Nathan said after a few moments. "I'm going to be sending it up to Westchester."

"What is it?"

"A brief history of the cyborg raids from my own time. They're similar to what's been going on now. There are differences, some pretty significant, but it could be useful."

"You're convinced, then?"

"I don't know what else it could be. Seeing that name on the list of possible hit points... I don't know who's here, but it can't be a friend."

***

"Alright everyone, stay in contact at all times," Cyclops warned as the ladder from the Blackbird touched down. 

The teams had been split up in accordance with the list Gambit had provided. Cyclops tried to match powers with climates - bringing Iceman with them to Belize would make less sense than sending him to the Ukraine, for instance. Cable had been absolutely insistent on taking Corinth, the place listed by its Askani name, and had only taken Domino with him. Jean extracted a promise to send a telepathic call should something happen, but Cyclops wasn't at ease with the setup.

"Feels like home," Rogue announced with a groan as she flew out of the plane. "'Xcept even more humid."

"Bitchin' 'bout it won't make it any better," Wolverine growled, out of sorts himself with the heat. "Got everythin', Storm?"

"Indeed, although I do not know why Gambit was so insistent upon us taking weapons," she said as she brought the crate out to where Phoenix could telekinetically pick it up to carry. 

"He mumbled somethin' 'bout a rumor sayin' that the bad guys were impervious to energy blasts," Wolverine replied and shrugged. The Cajun had been positively freaked about them leaving without guns, he recalled. Moreso than he had ever remembered him being. "These folks may be able to withstand energy blasts, but there ain't nothin' that's impervious to these," he added as he extended his claws and then retracted them."

Rogue pointed up to the sky. "Ah'll go scout ahead." 

Cyclops nodded approval to Rogue and watching her fly off.

"Even though I understand the need," Storm acknowledged. "I wish we did not have to bring the guns. They are very restricted in their use; they are to threaten and to kill, not to seek alternatives."

"I don't know that anyone we're going to encounter is too interested in alternatives," Cyclops pointed out. "Almost a thousand souls lost in the last week can attest to that."

The quintet marched quietly and slowly through the jungle on the south side of Belize, senses and telepathy attuned to any sort of motion. Within the hour, they reached the road leading to the village on the list. 

"Hold up," Wolverine cautioned. "I smell somethin'."

"Why don't we break into that crate while we've got the chance?" Cyclops suggested. "We'll look a little less peace-loving carrying guns, but I don't want to get caught unprepared."

Almost on cue, a noise coming from the nearby brush caused everyone to turn. A young woman, dress torn and face dirtied, came tumbling out, crying in broken English and they dropped their weapons ashamedly. 

"Help me, help me please! The men... they are killing everyone!"

"Stay here," Jean warned her. "We'll take care of it."

"Gracias, gracias... please hurry, please..." 

Storm and Phoenix each grabbed one of the men and took flight, landing at the edge of the village. They arrived to find Rogue looking perplexed. 

"Ah can't find anyone," she explained, her palms open and pointing up in the universal symbol of confusion. "Were we too late?"

"The girl..."

"Look out!" 

A wide-beam laser blast burned a hole in the ground where they had been standing. 

"**Someone's** here," Cyclops yelled as he rose to his feet looking around. "Spread out, keep in contact with Jean, and be careful!"

They scattered in different directions, weapons at the ready. 

Rogue took to the air and flew in the direction the laser had come from, hoping whoever had fired it was dumb enough to hang around. She landed carefully, looking around.

"Yoo hoo, anyone home?"

The buzz of the laser wasn't loud enough for Rogue to hear it before it struck her mid-back. 

"Ouch! It ain't polite to shoot someone in the back, yah know," she called out, ducking and trying to roll away from the next blast. Looking up, she could see the man wielding the weapon. "And Ah'm a stickler for manners."

When the man didn't make any move to either fight or flee, Rogue took action. 

"Well, if you're gonna stand there stock stupid," she trailed off as she stood up. Taking a page out of Cannonball's playbook, she took off in a low-trajectory flight directly at her attacker, knocking him over. 

"You're a robot!" Rogue cried out as she stood up, perplexed. It wasn't even a very good facsimile of a human once you got up close to it. All of a sudden, she felt hands on her arms. 

"Bad idea, mistah," Rogue grunted as she tried to duck down and flip her new assailant over her back. 

"What?!?" Despite her strength, he didn't budge, nor did she when she tried to take flight. Instead, she found herself lifted off of her feet a few inches. The robot at her feet rose and Rogue could see that the hand not holding the laser was not a hand at all, but a golden claw. A claw that was coming straight for her face. 

Kicking him away with her still-free legs, she concentrated on getting out of the other attacker's vise-like grip. The clawed robot rose again, this time coming at Rogue at an angle that prevented her from kicking it away. 

"Damned thing, Ah can't even make ya pay for touchin' me if ya ain't organic," she fumed. "Ah just hope Ah can make you pay once ya let me go."

The claw was inches away when, suddenly, lightning struck. 

"Thanks, Storm," Rogue muttered. 

The claw froze, but the robot didn't seem damaged. Instead, its eyes glowed bright green as it stepped back and turned around, marching slowly away. 

"What the..." 

Rogue and her keeper were walking slowly in the same direction as the clawed robot.

"Are ya a robot, too, or flesh-'n'-blood," Rogue asked her keeper as they moved towards the center of the village. "Ah'm inclined to say the former, 'xcept I can see skin by your wrists... Is it real, or is it rubber like the other guy? Ya ain't much of a conversationalist, that's for certain."

Storm landed next to the pair. "Forgive me sir, but I don't like it when my friends are taken off without their consent." She raised the rifle she was carrying, not to fire, but to take a baseball-type swing at the soldier's head. 

Suddenly, his - its? - head turned and it was all Storm could do to fly out of the way of the laser issuing from the mirrored mask. 

"Ah think it's time ya fired that thing, if ya don't mind," Rogue called behind her. "Ah'll survive gettin' that laser blast in the back of the head, but the headache Ah can do without."

"But to resort to murder so quickly... and the shrapnel that would be coming at you at such a close distance..." Storm hesitated even as she raised the sight to her eyes.

"Ah'm invulnerable enough to deal with the pieces, Storm, Ah just would like this thing be in pieces rather than me. It ain't human." *I don't think, at least...*

Storm shot into the back of Rogue's captor, but it did not even slow, let alone stop. 

"Aim for the head," Rogue called. 

"Goddess protect Rogue... and me," Storm whispered as she raised the gun once more. She was not concerned about her aim - Wolverine's insistence on teaching her how to fire a gun had already been proven prescient during the year she had lost her powers - but that did not erase the growing gnaw of concern for the others. Logan's lessons had been informal; target practice had never been a part of training for those who did not have ordinance-like powers. _Perhaps that should change. _

_#I think you're right. It's all I can do to use my telekinesis to hold them in place. In the interim, I'm sure your aim will be true.#_

"Thanks, Storm," the freed Rogue called over to her teammate as she joined her in the air. "Ah don't know what that was, but Ah do know that it's a lot stronger than we thought."

_#Indeed they are. My telepathy has no effect on them.#_

"That's 'cuz they ain't human, Phoenix, they're robots," Rogue answered aloud.

"Look ahead, Cyclops and Wolverine have run into a nest of them," Storm called out, pointing down on the ground. 

_#I'm on my way.#_

Cyclops was in the grip of another of the mirrored soldiers. As Rogue before him, he was unable to break free and his gun was caught between his own back and the front of his attacker. A golden-clawed robot was approaching him and Cyclops was firing full bore with his optic blasts, to no apparent effect. 

Suddenly, the clawed robot stopped its advance and turned away, heading off down the road. Another golden clawed robot approached. 

"Same as before. Ah don't think we're lucky enough to have that toy go off and explode," Rogue called over to Storm as they watched from above. 

_#Cyclops says that it doesn't look like his optic blasts were damaging the robot. Gambit was apparently correct about the resistance to energy-based weapons.#_

After telepathic urging from Phoenix, Wolverine abandoned his own fight to help out his teammate. Claws extended, he jumped on the back of the mirror-faced soldier and slashed away. All of a sudden, he howled and fell away, landing motionless on the ground. 

"Wolvie!" Rogue flew down and scooped him up. "What happened? Yah smell like singed hair."

"Guy's a walkin' electric chair," he answered groggily. "Felt like I was plugged into a power line. Let me down, I'm fine. Healin' factor took care of the damage already and I gotta get Cyke free." 

Rogue returned to ground and the other three X-Men. A combination of Jean's TK and a localized blizzard by Storm had gotten Cyclops out of the grip of the soldier. The rest of the attackers had disappeared.

"Well, that was a humbling moment," Cyclops sighed. "If we had so many problems, the villagers must have been easy prey... we still haven't seen any of them, have we?"

Wolverine looked around. "Nope, don't smell 'em, either." Instead, there was the heavy, warm scent of the jungle mixed with sweat, rotting fruit, and the faint scent of gear lubricant.

"Maybe they got carried off like Cyclops and Ah nearly did," Rogue suggested. 

Storm pointed. "Our assailants went off in that direction." 

"Well, let's go then," Jean exhorted. "If the villagers are still alive, then perhaps I'll be able to sense them once we get closer."

"And until then, we can try and figure out how to improve our chances against those 'bots," Cyclops added with a frown. "I don't know what that claw does, but I don't think it's anything pleasant and I'd rather nobody find out from personal experience."

Rogue and Storm flew above the trees and reported that there looked to be some sort of settlement half a mile ahead. 

"I don't sense anybody between here and there," Jean warned, "but if these are robots, then that doesn't mean anything..."

The group reached the next clearing without interruption or intercept. On the other side of the clearing, there was a bridge over a gully. Skirting the open areas, they approached it with caution. 

"There they are. And there are the villagers," Jean called softly, pointing at the area. Just over the bridge, the hundred-plus townspeople were sitting on the ground in rows. Mirror-faced guards stood at each end while the smaller, clawed robots were moving from person to person, touching each one. 

"Their thoughts are blank... clean mindwipes," Jean hissed. "I can't even feel what that claw is doing to them."

"Killin' 'em," Wolverine spat out. "Watch, they fall over after the claw goes away."

"Some of the clawed ones are turning away like they did when I shot my optic blasts. They're going to that structure over there..." Cyclops added, his voice full of wonder and puzzlement. "What is that? It looks like a submarine."

"One way ta find out," Rogue offered. "Fly reconnaissance."

"Careful, Rogue," Cyclops warned. "We don't know what kind of weapons they have."

"Partial invulnerability has its privileges," she called down as she rose into the air. 

"No!" Wolverine called out as the wind picked up, carrying a familiar scent. "Rogue!"

But the woman had no chance to heed any warning as a laser blast issued from somewhere on the other side of the bank. 

_Gawd, that hurts, _Rogue thought as she fell. _Like Viper's blaster way back when... Wonder if Wolverine's gonna have to save me this time..._

Storm immediately took off after her falling comrade, ducking another blast from the laser. 

"Can you see where it's coming from?" Jean asked her husband as Storm returned with Rogue. 

"No, It's too crowded over there... and I can't risk blasting the civilians."

"Then let's get over there and get a better shot," Wolverine growled angrily, extending his claws and heading for the bridge. 

"Wait," Jean called after him, freezing him telekinetically. "If we go over there pell-mell, we're going to end up in as bad a situation as we were in the village, and that was pretty much one-on-one."

"So whattya wanna do, Jeannie? Watch them get slaughtered from here?" Wolverine snarled, but relaxed his stance and Phoenix let him go. 

"Look," Rogue said weakly. "They've got a hostage."

Two of the mirror-faced soldiers were each gripping the arm of a woman as they marched her towards their end of the bridge. Unlike the passive villagers sitting on the ground, this one was kicking and screaming.

"That's the girl from before, isn't it?" Cyclops asked. "Why did she run back instead of running away? And how did she get ahead of us?"

"She didn't want to see her people get slaughtered," Wolverine snarled. "And I don't, either. We..."

Two shots rang out in the silence of the jungle. The hostage girl screamed in agony and collapsed in her keepers' arms. 

"Look!" Rogue pointed to a spot on the other side of the gully. A woman in flowing robes was holding a shotgun.

"She must be the leader. She looks human, so maybe we've got a chance," Cyclops said as he fired optic blasts in her direction. "Rogue, stay here with me. Everyone else head over the bridge and see if we can't get the some of the villagers free. See if that hostage is still alive. Rogue, here's my gun, let's give them some coverage."

The figure on the hill took aim once more at the hostage, but did not appear to hit her again and then was forced to duck away from Cyclops' optic blasts. She disappeared behind some rocks, then re-appeared closer to the robots, and then suddenly stopped. Lowering the shotgun, she raised her right arm and pointed towards Storm, Phoenix, and Wolverine. A brilliant dark blue energy blast issued forth, destroying the bridge entirely.

"No!" Cyclops cried out, even though he knew that two of the three were capable of flight and one possessed a healing factor. Sure enough, Phoenix and Storm, each with an arm under Wolverine's shoulders, landed safely next to Rogue. "Everyone all right?"

"Fine," Jean breathed. "Let me see if I can't get to our foe telepathically... AAGH!" She sank to her knees, but waved away any help. Catching her breath, Jean stood up again. "Her shields are impenetrable... they're unlike anything I've ever seen. She gave me a jolt for trying to get through them, but not enough to hurt me."

"So she is a telepath then," Storm mused. "But where is she?"

The five looked over, but the woman had disappeared from view. The two soldiers holding the woman hostage had started to drag her limp body back towards the submarine-like structure and the clawed robots were continuing with their task as if nothing had happened. 

"We have to get over there one way or another," Cyclops said, looking back and forth for possible weak points. "Let's see if we can't fly over there without getting blown to bits."

"There's better tree cover over on that side," Rogue suggested and pointed to her left. "Ah shoulda tried that route first."

Running over to where the gully narrowed and the trees grew larger, the group managed to get across unscathed. Sneaking along back towards the robots' encampment, the quintet was startled by a voice behind them. 

"I would not try further progress were I among your number," the robed woman warned, shotgun resting on her left shoulder like a seasoned hunter's would. "Your opponent's strength has already proven too great and your tactics too futile to risk further attempts."

Wolverine snarled as he extended his claws and spun around, but suddenly found that he didn't have either the energy or the will to move. The others seemed to be similarly affected. 

Their opponent held up a crude package with her right hand. "This is enough explosive to reduce to shards everything within its radius," she said, then disappeared into thin air. She returned a moment later, empty-handed. "The villagers are already lost. You have fifteen seconds to save yourselves."

With that, she disappeared again and the X-Men found themselves free to move. 

"Is she bluffing?" Rogue asked.

"It's not a good idea to find out," Cyclops answered. "Let's go, everyone, pronto!"

The explosion sent waves of searing heat past the fleeing X-Men, a hot wind strong enough to shake the flight of the normally sure-sailing Rogue. In her arms, Wolverine seethed. He was angry at the loss of life, he was angry at their defeat, and he was angry at his own impotence in the face of it all. 

But most of all, he was angry at himself for not following his own instincts the other week. 

"The Cajun's got a lot of questions to answer once we get home."

Nearby, Cyclops - being carried in Storm's grip - and Jean were also uneasy. 

_Those robes... she couldn't have been..._

#Everything else about her was all wrong. She's not Askani. We'll have to ask Nathan once we're home.# 

***

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http://www.geocities.com/nikimarzione/ 


	6. Future Pluperfect 6: The Enemy of Your E...

Future Pluperfect: Chapter 6 

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"So we just sit around?" Domino looked around the outdoor café. Not that Greece was a bad place to kill time in the winter. 

"We just sit around," Cable agreed. "At least until the action starts."

She watched the old men at the corner table playing dominoes. There were two playing and four watching, leaning back in their chairs with their cigarettes in one hand and their combalos swinging back and forth rhythmically in the other. "Do we know that it will?" 

"I'd bet on it," he said almost dismissively. "It was a slip-up to leave Evensea Isthmus on the list. If they could have used the contemporary name, they would have, which means that they didn't want to leave it off."

"What?" She took a sip of her frappé. 

"Huh?"

"What are you betting," Domino elaborated. If Nathan was going to be like this, the least she could do was make it worth her while. He had been annoyingly quiet on the flight from New York to Athens and positively silent for the drive between Athens and Corinth. The comfort that she had taken in the fact that she knew more than the X-Men did had worn out long ago. So if she was going to be left to amuse herself, the least she could do was play on her terms. 

"Betting... oh. Umm... I don't know, what would you like?" Cable looked thoughtful. Supremely confident, but thoughtful. He could feel Dom's irritation, even though he knew she had been shielding the link more and more since it had been re-established. Were he less focused on the mission, he would have realized that the past thirteen hours in transit would have been a perfect opportunity to mend the still-present rift between the two of them. But he couldn't afford to not focus on the mission, and besides, Dom was used to him keeping his own counsel... _which is precisely why she walked out of your life last year, now isn't it, Dayspring?_

"How about a nice weekend in Florence?" Domino cocked her head to the side. 

"Florence? I didn't think you'd ever want to go back there," he replied, smiling that grin that Domino knew as the 'Remembrances of Damage Done' dreamy smile. "You didn't speak to G.W. for a week after that."

"Or you."

"Or me," Cable agreed, using a little telekinesis to subtly shift the umbrella over their table to block out more sun. "But only for a week. You were a more forgiving person back then."

"No I wasn't," Domino corrected, stirring her drink with her straw. At a kafenio like this one, the frappé was made with a blender so the foam would last. Elsewhere, everyone in Greece owned one of those plastic Nescafe jugs you had to shake yourself. "I just started to go a little crazy talking only to Grizz and Hammer for a week. A girl can talk about fish and football for only so long before she starts to crumble."

Cable chuckled. "It was a good mission."

"You weren't the one dressed up as a nun." Domino sipped delicately at her drink and watched the sweat bead down the side of the water glass. The Greeks understood that coffee was supposed to be strong. That's why a glass of water came with every coffee drink. You got rid of the bitter taste in your mouth afterwards, not during - outside of the tourist areas, an "American coffee" was merely a rumor. A bad joke, like cholesterol and lung cancer. 

"No, then it would certainly have been a memorable mission. More so than it already was."

"So that's what I want you to put up. I'd kind of like to see the place without having to scout for good places to have a firefight. It's supposed to have a lot of nice art." 

"It does," Cable agreed. "Architecture, too. You're serious?"

"No, this is all elaborate wordplay intended to get you to take me to Disneyworld," Domino retorted. 

"I just never considered you as someone who'd like to spend the day looking at piazzas and fountains," Cable replied thoughtfully. There, now they had officially opened the can of worms labeled 'Private Life'. 

"I've always liked old cities," Domino answered and shrugged. "We just never got to many while we were with the Pack. New money hires mercs, old money has their own soldiers."

"Just don't tell me you used to go antiquing on off-days," Cable implored, looking at Domino over the top of his sunglasses. She had never really shown an appreciation for the sights while they had been working together. Not, as she had pointed out, that they had seen many pleasant ones. Of course, he probably wouldn't have noticed if she had been playing tourist. For the longest time, down time was something she spent with Grizz. 

"Is that a yes?" 

"Yeah," Cable confirmed. "One weekend in Florence complete with sightseeing. So what are you putting up?"

"Me? Nothing."

"Nothing? That's not fair."

"It's not my hubris that's getting tested," she said as the waitress came by, refilling their water glasses. 

"Hubris?"

"You're so damned sure that you're the one who is going to find the cyborgs - which are _your_ idea, don't forget - and _you_ are the one who wouldn't let anyone else come with you. You think you can do this all by yourself." 

"Not by myself. You're here."

"I'm here only for the spectacle. It's either hubris or gross stupidity on your part. I think hubris is more flattering." At the nearest occupied table, a couple of college-aged girls were digging in to a massive piece of galatoboureko and Domino decided she was getting a little hungry. 

"I resent that."

"Resent away. We're here by ourselves looking to take on some of the thirty-eighth century's most dangerous soldiers. You better hope all you have do is cough up a couple of days in Florence."

Cable said nothing then, but smiled inwardly. The block on her end of the psi-link was being held in place just a little less tightly. 

***

"Anyone out there?" Cannonball asked Psylocke as they surveyed the small town in the valley below them. He wished Magneto hadn't spent so much time making him read history. Those who were ignorant of the past may be condemned to repeat it, but there was nothing comforting that the past could teach him about hiding out waiting for a fight in the middle of a Russian winter.

"I don't sense anyone," the telepath replied, her breath thick in the frigid air. "Either we're too late or they've already fled."

"I hope it's the latter," Archangel mused. He ruffled his wings to keep them warm. It had not been his first choice to come to this Ukrainian farming village, but Cyclops had correctly pointed out that out of the flyers, he was best suited to open country and not the vines and trees of the jungle. Not that he couldn't negotiate tight spaces - Charles had made damned sure he could do the best his condor-like wingspan could manage - but as long as there were others... So he had headed off to the Ukraine, where it was cold, very cold, and the sweltering dankness of Belize didn't sound so bad just about now. 

"There's Gambit," Iceman said, pointing to a spot in the distance. "He's almost to the village." He frowned to himself as Archangel grunted. Were he the one separating the teams, he wasn't sure he'd have put Archangel and Gambit on the same unit. Of course, the alternative was to have the Cajun go with either Rogue's team or Joseph's, and, well, the former would probably use him as cannon fodder and the latter would be tripping over himself apologizing. Scott was just sadistic enough to make Warren deal head-on with his lingering antipathy towards Gambit. Sadistic in the sense that Fearless Leader wouldn't care who else had to suffer while Warren pouted. 

"Are you sure we should have left him go alone to scout?" Colossus asked. "I at least speak the language."

Psylocke laughed gently. "No offense, Colossus, but you aren't exactly built for skulking. Gambit'll be fine. He's not supposed to be talking to anyone."

And there's the other misfit, Iceman thought to himself. _We take Piotr because Kitty's treating him like Rogue's treating Gambit. Since when did I become the designated master of the reject rack?_

#_You and me both, Drake_#, Psylocke sent back at him. #_What? You're projecting._#

Down amongst the naked wheat stalks, Gambit moved carefully. He had been insistent on taking the point on the mission - he had claimed that his thieving skills would make him the best candidate, but in reality, he wanted to see if the Harvesters were there. 

Breaking into open ground, Gambit looked around. Nobody was outdoors, which was not normal for a farming village in mid-day. Even during winter, when there were no crops to tend, someone should have been chasing a cow or something. 

Gun cocked, Gambit edged around the side of a barn. In the distance, he could see movement. Soldiers - taller than he was, much more so than the Harvesters, and heavily armored. Their faces were obscured by reflective shields and they were all carrying large-gauge plasma weapons. 

_Too late._ Running silently towards the column, he could see Harvesters moving in and out of homes, accompanied by the taller soldiers. _Like Quebec, the people are 'asleep' throughout. But who knocked them out?_

"Only one t'ing to do," Gambit mumbled as he took aim at a Harvester, careful to go for the head. The gun was not silenced and the shot rang out loudly in the thin, silent air.

#_Gambit? Are you all right?_#

_We're almost too late, Psylocke. The attackers are going through town killing people in their sleep. Bring everyone down here. I'm trying to distract them._

Gambit was alternately firing his weapons and ducking away from the lasers returning in his direction when the rest of the team arrived. Archangel and Cannonball were airborne, Iceman ferrying the others on an ice slide. They set down behind the storehouse Gambit was hiding behind, all with matching looks of confusion. 

"Why isn't anyone fighting back?" Cannonball asked.

"Can't," Gambit replied.

Iceman stood away from the wall and peered around the corner at the soldiers. "Let's see if an ice wall will slow them down. Pen them in, maybe." 

Gambit couldn't see the wall that was getting built, but didn't need to. 

"Err... maybe not."

"At least the odds are in our favor," Archangel called back to the others as he hovered nearby. "Five of them versus six of us."

"Dat don't count the ones on the other side o' town," Gambit pointed out. "Suspect the numbers are probably double what we got."

"Well, that's certainly never stopped us before," Colossus shrugged. "Come, let us not waste any more time."

"Cannonball," Archangel began, gesturing with his arm in the direction of the village center. "You go with Psylocke and Gambit and see how bad the damage is over there. Colossus, Iceman, and I will stay here to see what we can do."

Cannonball nodded, waiting for the other two before blasting into the air.

"They're robots, don't bother wit' your psi knives," Gambit warned as one materialized in Psylocke's hand. 

Psylocke arched an eyebrow in disbelief, but discorporated the knife after a telepathic scan of the visible soldiers produced no results. 

"Well," she sighed. "Let's go."

Gambit gestured for Cannonball to take to the air, putting his finger to his lips to indicate that he should do so as quietly as possible and the younger man nodded before alighting with a muffled rumble. Gambit and Psylocke had no problems passing through the town by foot completely unnoticed. It was almost a race - his thief's grace versus her shadow-walking - although they kept within sight of each other for simple safety reasons.

Still at the storehouse, Iceman, Colossus, and Archangel took stock of the situation. 

"Well, we aren't going to outgun them, that's for sure," Iceman said. "I guess we'll have to try for the best and outsmart them."

"I might have a little luck with more rudimentary means," Colossus said as he pushed away from the wall and moved towards some of the closest attackers. In his steel form, the plasma blasts ricocheted off and Iceman threw up a shield to deflect some of the blasts. 

"Colossus, no!" Archangel watched helplessly as the super-strong Russian was quickly overmatched by a pair of the mirror-faced soldiers. A third came to help hold him in place as one of the smaller, more human-looking robots approached. These weren't even armed and Archangel wondered what function they could serve until one arm extended and a menacing-looking golden claw was visible at the end of it. The claw was apparently hot enough to melt whatever Iceman was trying to freeze it with and there was a flash of light when it made contact with Colossus's chest. The big Russian screamed in agony and the other two could see him visibly start to weaken. 

"It's like a robot Rogue," Archangel murmured to himself as he went into a sharp dive, building up speed so that he would have enough momentum to grab the clawed robot. Careful to get a grip that would keep his face - the only part of him with exposed skin - away from the claw's reach, he banked sharply to the right and climbed again into the air, looking for a place to drop his passenger. Settling for dumping it in a fallow field, Archangel sped back to where Iceman was fighting off two soldier-robots in an attempt to free the slumped Colossus from the other three. 

"Freeze the trio holding Colossus," Archangel called out to Iceman as he took the safety off his rifle. "And then I'll shoot. Hopefully, the ice will cool their metal enough to make them brittle."

POW!KaBOOM!

The explosion, obviously coming from the other side of the village, was a surprise. 

"What the..."

Down the street from where the smoke was rising, thick and acrid, Psylocke, Cannonball, and Gambit came running. They stopped before the remains of a burning house, evidence of charred robot shining in the sun as the smell of burning flesh filled the air. 

"Friend or foe?" Psylocke spun around, psi knife in her hand. A strangely dressed young woman was standing a couple of yards behind them.

"The enemy of mine enemy is my friend," the woman replied in a heavy accent Psylocke couldn't recognize, her defiant posture matched by a disapproving expression. "It does no good, friend Gambit, to arm the soldiers if they will not fire."

"We do not kill, Askani."

"You know her?" Psylocke raised an eyebrow as she dissolved the knife. That Gambit had been the one to provide the X-Men with the crucial information suddenly seemed a whole lot less random. "Askani?"

"You didn't tell me 'bout dese new ones," Gambit told the new arrival, ignoring his teammate.

"It was not intentional on my part," she replied with a disappointed sigh, her expression softening marginally. "I apologize for not better anticipating our opponent."

Psylocke suddenly gasped and stumbled into Cannonball's arms. Out of the corner of his eye, Sam saw Archangel, Iceman, and a wounded-looking Colossus down the street. They picked up their pace towards them as she fell. 

"Are all telepaths here-and-now so devoid of manners that they invite themselves into even a stranger's mind?" The woman asked coldly, pushing aside the edge of her surcoat so they could see the weapon belted to her left hip. "Attempt such rudeness again and you shall be headblind for all your days."

"Gettin' back to the matter at hand here," Cannonball spoke up, keeping up his grip on Psylocke so she didn't karate chop the woman before they got answers. He, too, was confused about Gambit calling her 'Askani', but pushed aside his curiosity for now. "Didn't you just kill a house full of civilians to get to a few robots?"

"The occupants were already dead, although everyone in this encampment is dead in spirit if not yet in body," the woman replied. "We are too late." 

"I can't feel anybody," Psylocke agreed reluctantly as she stood up, working hard to dampen her outrage at the stranger. Yes, barging into someone else's mind was somewhat rude, but the response had been something well beyond a simple mental door-slamming. Far be it wise to trust one of Gambit's friends without caution, but he did treat her as though she knew what was going on. Which was more than any of the X-Men could say. "Were they rendered unconscious?" Even as she asked, she knew that wasn't the answer. The utter lack of any sort of mental activity was not that of any sleep.

"Mindwiped," the woman answered, shaking her head as if in disappointment. "They are catatonic and will never awaken. Those that are not killed this day will perish of dehydration and starvation."

Gambit waited for Iceman, Colossus, and Archangel to pull up before speaking. "How bad is it?" he asked the Askani.

"Have you destroyed any of the Harvesters?"

"The X-Men don't kill, Miss," Cannonball warned. 

"Then you shall sentence the future to unending horror as well as cost one of your cohort his life," she replied with a disgusted expression. Gesturing at Gambit, she added, "The students of Xavier have already shown themselves capable of the latter. Would your selective passivity allow a holocaust as well?"

"We are no cowards," Colossus spoke up. "Some of us have already died to prevent such atrocities."

"Then show your courage," she challenged. "The window of opportunity is rapidly closing and the Harvesters feed even as we fuel our own discord. Your quarry is not sentient, far indeed from human, so do not lets pangs of misguided guilt carry this day." With that, she disappeared. 

"Your friend's got an attitude," Psylocke said dryly, frowning at Gambit. 

"_Friend_?" The just-arrrived Archangel raised an eyebrow. "You do seem to have them in the most peculiar places, Gambit." A_nd what secrets does she hold for you this time, dear teammate? None pleasant, I'm willing to guess..._

"Peut-être." Gambit shrugged, imagining what was going on behind the sudden darkness in Archangel's eyes and pushing aside the thoughts. "But she's also right. We gotta get back to work. What's left behind after the Harvesters are done ain't pretty."

"Well, since we don't have to worry about any more fatalities," Cannonball began ruefully.

"Let's split into pairs and go robot-hunting, huh?" Iceman suggested, picking up Cannonball's cue. _Best get Warren away from Gambit now, before someone says something else._

"Don't worry 'bout the big ones," Gambit told the newer arrivals. "Harvesters are the trouble."

"Trust me, tovarisch," Colossus replied ruefully, touching the scorch mark on his chest that would need treatment the moment he reverted back to flesh-and-blood, "This we know well."

"Keep in contact with me," Psylocke told everyone. 

Mindful of their opponents' abilities, the X-Men fared better on their second attempt at drawing out their opponents. After years of Danger Room sessions with Rogue, dealing with the Harvesters proved relatively easy, while the challenge lay in getting them away from their so-far invulnerable escorts. 

A half-hour later, the team was going house-to-house looking for either survivor or attacker, the mirror-faced soldiers seemingly having vanished into the mist. In one small farmhouse, Archangel walked into a bedroom to find Psylocke holding a child in her arms. 

"I can't undo it," she whispered brokenly, looking up at him with tear-laden eyes. "The girl is alive, but I can't fix her mind. There's nothing left to reconstruct. She's going to die, and the only choice I have is to let nature take its course or take care of it myself."

Coming over to them, he could see the child's blue eyes staring blankly at the ceiling. She couldn't be more than five or six years old and, even expressionless, her face had the shine of innocence. 

"Let me take her," Archangel said quietly. _For I am Death, and I have come to claim that which is mine._ Psylocke handed over the child reluctantly, smoothing her soft hair once she was settled in Archangel's arms. Holding the child close and feeling her slow, even breathing, Archangel turned away from Psylocke and walked to the window. "Do it."

Behind him, he heard Psylocke sigh deeply. After a moment, the girl's breathing stopped. Archangel closed the child's eyes, but did not otherwise move. He felt Psylocke's hand on his arm. 

"Let's go," she whispered. 

He put the child back into her bed, tucking in the covers like he imagined her parents would do (were they not in the same vegetative state in the room next door), and turned away. 

#She died in the arms of an Angel, Warren. The best fate of anyone in this town today. Would that be enough to comfort us.#

Once out on the street, they caught up with the other four. 

"Ah think we're done, for what that's worth," Cannonball said once they were all together. His eyes were dull, Gambit noticed, the same way they had been after he had gotten back from Slovenia. Boy's too young to be seeing this. "We got the claws and the big ones disappeared." 

"Maybe we should take one of the robot carcasses back with us," Iceman suggested. "See if Hank or Kitty or someone can take it apart and make something of it. Keep this from happening again."

Colossus found a relatively intact Harvester - one that had been decapitated earlier, its head lying next to it - and the group slowly made their way back to their plane. The town felt haunted in a way it hadn't before, the wind whistling through the streets in eerie echoes. 

As they passed in front of the last house before the fields began, a laser blast exploding behind them shattered the heavy silence. 

"Damn it, so much for getting out of here unscathed," Psylocke hissed as she brought her gun around.

"Look, over there, they've got a hostage!"

At the edge of the field, a dozen of the mirror-faced soldiers stood. Two of them were guarding a terrified young woman holding an infant. 

"Let her go!" Colossus called out, first in Russian, then in English. Nobody moved. 

"Aim for their heads," Gambit suggested as he saw Psylocke put the gun sight to her eye. The bullets ricocheted off the mirrored masks. "Mebbe not."

"On the tractor!" 

Cannonball nudged Gambit as they all turned. "Your friend is back."

Looking over, they could see the woman aiming a shotgun at the soldiers. 

"Maybe she's got bigger bullets."

The blast echoed loudly and they could hear the hostage scream. The baby lay on the ground and the woman was huddled in pain, blood pouring from her chest. The baby had been hit as well and Colossus nearly retched as he saw the damage done by the blast to the tiny head.

"What the..." 

Horrified, Gambit shifted his attention between the Askani and the Kurioon soldiers that were not moving to either retaliate or take aim at the X-Men. 

"That's _quite_ enough," Psylocke snarled as she pulled a pistol out of her holster and fired. The woman collapsed a moment later, the shotgun clanking loudly against the tractor hood. "Sedative darts. We have an inhibitor band in the mini-jet. That'll keep her from running off before we deal with her." 

"Cannonball, go get her and meet us at the plane," Archangel ordered angrily. 

"Where did the soldiers go?" Psylocke asked in surprise.

The space where the dozen soldiers had been was empty. 

"The baby and the woman are gone, too," Iceman said in disgusted awe. 

Gambit followed behind the others, nauseous with the fear that he had just accidentally run counter to the good guys once again. 

***

Storm watched as Colossus carried an unconscious figure in from the hangar. "That is the woman from Belize." 

"Funny, we found her next to a barn in the Ukraine," Iceman replied with a frown as he tagged along behind. The ride home had been... charged. It was almost as if they had brought home two prisoners - Gambit and his mysterious friend. "Where's Cyke?"

"Coming... What? How did you end up with her?" Cyclops asked as he approached. "Piotr, take her to the med lab and have Hank keep an eye on her. She's a teleporter and I don't want her popping out until we get a few answers out of her."

Colossus nodded, but Cyclops tagged along anyway. 

At that moment Gambit jogged through the door, avoiding everyone but keeping an eye on the retreating Colossus and his burden. 

"Gambit, I think you had best go upstairs," Archangel said coldly from where he stood next to Psylocke and Phoenix. "I'm sure everyone will want to talk to you shortly."

The Cajun turned sharply at the command, glared, but left without a word. 

"What was that all about?" Jean raised an eyebrow meaningfully at Warren. 

"The lady in question is apparently a friend of our mysterious teammate," Psylocke said evenly, debating whether to share with Jean the two images that she couldn't shake from her mind: the half-headless baby and the child she and Warren had found. As far as she was concerned, the woman was responsible for both deaths. 

Remy went directly up to his room, pondering whether or not to pack his things and leave before he was asked to go. He didn't consider himself a coward and fleeing would be hard on the ego, but a second pardon would be too much to ask for. He wasn't even sure he _wanted_ another pardon and sincerely hoped he didn't need one. _I'm not the only one with secrets, but I'm the only one who has to apologize for them._

"Goin' somewhere?" 

Wolverine was in the doorway as Gambit stood in front of his open drawers. The younger man covered his surprise at the visit and shrugged indifferently. 

Logan took it for what it was worth. He had seen Archangel bark at the kid and thought it uncalled for, especially with Cyke right there. Scott had been saying as much to Warren when he had slipped past Storm and moved upstairs to find Gambit.

"Before you take off, answer me this: who is she?"

Remy sighed and pulled his cowl off, ruffling his hair where it had been pressed against his skin. "Tol' you already. She's the woman who rescued me from Antarctica."

"Relax, Gumbo, I'm not Archangel. Or Rogue," Logan said, stepping into the room and closing the door behind him once he heard the voices of the others as they emerged from the basement complex and moved around the main floor below him. "What do you know about her?"

Remy pulled off his body armor and his uniform shirt before replying.

"Said she's from Cable's time," he said as he leaned against the chest of drawers, now closed. "Told me 'bout the Harvesters and 'bout where we'd find them. She gave me the disk."

"The Harvesters are those robots?"

"The ones wit' the claws," Remy nodded, seemingly taking strength from the other man's even tone. 

Logan frowned to himself. The kid was entirely too preoccupied with what others thought about him. "What did she want you to do?"

"Destroy the Harvesters and keep Cable as far away as possible." 

"That's it?"

Remy nodded vigorously. "Told her I didn't want to keep secrets from you guys, not after Antarctica, but she didn't give me much alternative..."

"She threaten you?" Logan pushed up off the wall, concerned. 

"Non! Just made it sound like anyt'ing I said would put Cable's life in jeopardy," Remy explained, then frowned with obvious disgust. "Did what she said 'cause it was a debt to be paid. For saving my life. For a t'ief, I get into awful problems with owing people, hein?"

Logan said nothing for a long moment, chewing thoughtfully on his unlit cigar. 

"She killed a maman and un bébé today, Logan," Remy sighed heavily, looking at Logan with a gaze that was never anything but shockingly penetrating. Even now, when it was accompanied by such a soft, defeated tone of voice. "Jus' took out 'er gun and bang... She was aimin' at them. No accident. Even if she's here to help Cable..." He trailed off, shaking his head in disbelief. 

"Won't be the first psycho we've had on our side," Logan replied with a shrug. "But we'll see."

Remy made an indecipherable face, but said nothing. 

"Alright," Logan said, turning to reach for the doorknob. He was almost out the door before Remy said anything. 

"C'est tout? 'Alright'?" 

"What else ya want? I know you're not lyin', so now it's just a matter of gettin' Wings off yer back. Cyke's reasonable, even if the girl's a nutjob," Logan said, shrugging. "I'm not gonna tell ya to lie low or anything; you lie any lower then you been doin' and you'll be in the basement."

"Yeah, well," Remy replied, shrugging. "Shower clear?"

"Yeah."

***

"She's either tellin' the truth or she's a real good liar," Logan spoke quietly to Jean and Scott as he finished retelling Gambit's story. They were standing in the hallway outside the med lab, awaiting Hank's return. "Remy's even more freaked then when he came back from Antarctica, but he's not lyin' now... anymore than he was then."

Scott took the silent rebuke without comment. Issues surrounding Gambit had yet to be fully resolved and every reminder of that fact bespoke a weakness on his own leadership. "I don't know what to do, then. Even if she saved Remy's life, she's killed how many others? She doesn't look like an Askani sister. The clothes are close enough, but everything else..."

"Her shields are so complex, I can't even begin to explain," Jean added. "They make Nathan's look simple and his are quite impressive." 

"Ah, there you are," Hank called as he appeared at the bottom of the stairwell. "So much for my attempts at taking the initiative by tracking you down to the study. Shall we?" He gestured grandly towards the med lab. 

The mysterious woman was still unconscious. Jean felt a moment's guilt about the inhibitor band they had placed on her ankle, but, well, she _was_ a teleporter. 

"Do we know what those things on her hands are?" Scott asked, gesturing at the thin metal bracelets that were on each wrist. They were delicate and marked with some sort of design and would easily be able to pass for jewelry were there not some sort of flexible metal ribbons stretching from them to the webbing between each of her fingers. "Are those robotic... or techno-organic?"

McCoy held up a limp hand. "She has no anatomical irregularities in her wrists or hands and the bracelet part moves freely around, but these... attachments seem to be bonded to her skin."

"Are they dangerous?"

"The entire contraption is probably some sort of weapon," Hank allowed, "but I can't remove the bracelet and I dare not remove the rest." 

Scott nodded and ran fingers through hair. "Even if she's from the future, she could be a Canaanite spy, or even part of Apocalypse's minion. They got a little spiteful, Nathan said, after the boss died."

"I hope it's not that. Gambit would never get over it," Jean said sadly, then frowned in irritation. "Nor would Archangel. Hank, do you know when she'll wake up?"

"I can wake her now, if you'd like."

"Might as well," Scott said. 

Fifteen minutes after she had nearly taken the blue-furred beast's arm off as he waved smelling salts beneath her nose - a move that had prompted another of her captors to pin her arms in an uncomfortable position until she could convince them that she meant no harm - Mirrin sat on a bed in the medlab surrounded by the X-Men. 

_And so my third introduction to the most important heroes of all goes no better than the first two_, she thought to herself. When she had been a child, she had heard many stories of this group. Brave, virtuous fighters who battled against the forces of evil for good, not for conquest. Warriors who showed compassion to all and used their mutant abilities to help humanity instead of enslave it. 

When she was older and her childish naiveté had been replaced by the grim realities of a life on the run, Mirrin had listened enraptured because the Askani passed on these stories as treasured tales. For these were the compeers of the Mother Askani herself, the clan of the First Ones. Nathan's _parents_ were standing before her and Mirrin was filled with an awe she didn't think she was capable of anymore, a new brightness to counteract the bitter resentment that usually went along with any consideration of her life's mission. 

Mirrin closed her eyes to center herself. Awe and hero worship had its place, but not here. Not when she had a job to do. These may be the original followers of Xavier, but until she found Nathan, they were to be given no quarter. Especially when they were keeping her prisoner without access to her telepathy. 

She opened her eyes when someone spoke. 

"Take those off," she was told, indicating the armor on her wrists. 

"I cannot," she replied, acutely aware of her accent. "They are attuned to my psi signature and I do not imagine that you will be removing the inhibitor anytime soon." She lifted her ankle slightly and was rewarded with a menacing step forward by the short man who had so recently held her arms back. 

"Who are you?" Scott asked in the language he had used in the thirty-eighth century. It was one of the few phrases he still remembered. 

Mirrin smiled at the use, albeit heavily accented, of a tongue she had not heard since her childhood even as she was surprised. But this was Nathan's father - the Mother Askani's father - so the surprise was not so great. "I am called Askani," she answered back in formal speech. 

"But what is your _name_?" Scott asked with a frown, reverting to English. "It's something else. Even if you were Askani, it would be something else."

"I am called Askani." 

"Fine," Scott growled. "Then what are you doing in this time?"

"The affairs of the Sisterhood are not to be discussed freely or with outsiders."

"We're not outsiders, damn it!" 

Mirrin cocked an eyebrow. 

"You rescued one of our friends," Jean began in a gentle voice. You attract more flies with sugar... "Why?" 

Mirrin laughed sharply. "Because he was freezing to death." 

Behind her, Mirrin heard the small man bark out a laugh. 

"But why were you in Antarctica?"

_The why of any situation..._ "The affairs of the Sisterhood are not to be discussed freely or with outsiders."

Jean frowned. If sugar didn't work, she knew of a certain cosmic entity that had a better success rate. From personal experience, Jean knew that the legend of Dark Phoenix had survived until the thirty-eighth century.

#_Be careful, Jean_,# Cyclops sent over their psychic rapport. #_There's no point in antagonizing her any further until we get some information out of her_.#

Jean nodded silently to her husband, and then turned the charm back on to deal with their 'guest'. "Who do you work for?"

"I am called Askani."

The interrogation went on in a similar vein for some time before an exasperated Cyclops left Wolverine and Colossus to escort Mirrin up to one of the spare bedrooms on the main level. The room was psi-dampened and had no means of easy escape. 

"I find out ya used the Cajun and I'll send you back to your time in a pine box," Wolverine hissed at her once inside the room, extending a claw for emphasis. Piotr frowned, but did not say anything. 

"Pine is a most valued material in my here-and-now," the woman told him indifferently. "It would be a generous gift well appreciated by my clan."

Logan snarled. "I wouldn't be so cocky. That anklet knocks you down a peg or three." He indicated the inhibitor latched to her right leg. 

"Only the weak rely on their powers, feral one. Headblind and bound, I need no gifts to survive."

Logan was about to say something else when Piotr finally stepped in. "Tovarisch, let us go. We are not being productive here. She will not cower and you will not strike her down."

"Until later," Wolverine told the Askani. 

"G'Journey."

***

* * *

http://www.geocities.com/nikimarzione/ 


	7. Future Pluperfect 7: Wreaking Havok

Future Pluperfect: Chapter 7 

* * *

"She says she's Askani," Jean explained to Nathan and Domino as they went towards the room their prisoner (Jean frowned at the word) was being kept in. "But she doesn't look like one. She's got that... look to her, but I can't get through her shields."

"Have you gotten _anything_ out of her?" Cable asked as he walked side-by-side with Jean. He had been utterly unsurprised when his cell phone had rung the moment he and Domino had landed at JFK. Cyclops had told him that they had brought back a prisoner who said she was from the future. The conversation had been necessarily brief, so he hadn't gotten enough answers to know whether to feel apprehensive or relieved. Although at the mention of a visiting Askani sister, he was inclined towards the former. 

"Other than a version of name, rank, and serial number? No."

They stopped outside of what Cable knew was a spare bedroom. "I don't sense anything," he said, tilting his head as if that would improve his telepathic hearing. It was a habit he wished he could break. 

"The room is dampened and she's got an inhibitor on her," Cyclops explained with a frown. He shook his head at the memory of the trouble the woman had caused. "Not only is she a telepath, but she's also a teleporter, from what we can tell, and we didn't want her disappearing before you got here."

Nathan quirked an eyebrow. "A teleporter?" There had only been one teleporter, at least from the time he was aware of such things. But that was impossible, so who...

He gave the door a quick knock and then opened it and crossed the threshold. What he saw stopped him so suddenly that Domino, walking behind him, crashed into him.

"Nate?" Domino asked, concerned by the sudden burst of emotion pouring down their psi-link. Shock, anguish, guilt, and joy.

Peering around Cable, she could see a young woman sitting on the bed, knees drawn up to her chest and the inhibitor on her ankle glowed in the afternoon sunlight. She had the forced-relaxed posture of someone who had been in captivity before and knew how to stay alert at all times, but that changed suddenly.

"Min?" Nathan's voice was suddenly hoarse, a whisper conveying all that Domino could feel on the link and she stepped back. 

"Fair tidings, brother Nathan," the woman answered back in Askani, a self-mocking smile playing on her face even as her eyes went from cold detachment to warm delight. "I have a way with ingresses and egresses, do I not?" She extended the leg with the inhibitor and rolled her eyes. 

With a flash of rage so strong that Domino nearly collapsed into Jean, Cable extended his arm, the anklet exploding into tiny fragments from the telekinetic burst. 

He turned, then, and faced Jean, Domino, Scott and the newly arrived Logan. "_Never_ put anything like that on her _ever_ again," he hissed, eye glowing bright as the sun.

"I take it she's legit, then," Logan drawled, outwardly unaffected, but inwardly impressed. Girl must be something impressive for Cable to be shaking with anger, he mused to himself.

The woman, having carefully padded on bare feet across the now shrapnel-covered floor, poked her head around Cable's massive frame and Logan looked at her closely, this time examining her has a possibly ally instead of as a threat. The cold, distant, haughty look that had so irritated him before was gone. Instead, mirth was the dominant expression, coupled with a shocking youthfulness that had been covered up by the severity and imperiousness. _She's a kid._

"I am called Askani," she said, holding out her right hand in greeting. "But my name is Mirrin."

"You two know each other, then," Jean began after a sigh. She could still feel the maelstrom of things leaking through Nathan's normally impervious shields that had so overwhelmed her a moment before and hoped that he would explain eventually. Especially before it was too late. 

"She's an old and dear friend," Nathan said quietly, not trusting his voice. 

From where he was watching the scenario from behind Jean, Scott tamped down the slightly giddy thoughts raced through his mind, something about how his son's friends always visited accompanied by explosions. But they went away as quickly as they had come. And then he started to plot how to deal with the rest of the X-Men's reaction to the new situation. It was not going to be pretty. 

There was a thoughtful silence for a moment, but it was shattered by a new arrival. 

"Is everything all right?" Sam Guthrie asked, concern on his face as he stopped short in front of the group. "Ah thought Ah heard Cable and Domino - good ta see you ma'am, sir - and then Ah heard an explosion..."

"Nate's found an old pal, Sam," Domino explained dryly, hiding her happiness to see the young man behind a smirk. "Don't worry. He hasn't done in his family... just yet."

"She's... you're... oh," Sam trailed off and scratched the back of his head in mild embarrassment. Long ago, he had learned that when dealing with anything involving Cable's past, the only approach to take was the Taoist one - just go with it. "Then Ah suppose Ah should apologize for the rude welcome from before."

Mirrin raised an eyebrow, but didn't let her smile falter. So it _was_ him. Earlier, in the Ukraine, she had thought it might be. But he had sounded so young... which only stood to reason. Because here-and-now, he _was_ so young. But the way he seemed so genuinely _happy_ to see Nathan, it couldn't be anyone else..."It was understandable under the circumstances," she told him, pushing the thoughts aside. They didn't matter now. 

"Sam, why don't you go find people and meet us in the conference room downstairs," Scott suggested, not bothering to hide the vague hint of foreboding he felt. He had been on everyone's case enough as it was with Remy and now he was sure that he was going to have to play the heavy again, this time with Nathan's friend. "Might as well get the whole story out at once." _It'll cut down on the number of rebellions I have to quell_, he added mentally. He heard Jean chuckle. 

Sam nodded and ran back the way he had come. Domino half expected him to blast, he was so excited. And the greater half of the source of that excitement was currently making her seasick by having their psi-link swing wildly between profound sorrow and childish mirth. Mostly towards the former.

After one too many swings, she elbowed Nathan as they walked down the hallway past the entry foyer and towards the dining rooms. "Spit it out already."

"Pardon?" He sounded genuinely confused.

"Whatever it is that has you halfway to hysteria," Domino elaborated bluntly as she slowed her gait so as to give them that much more distance from Logan, who was walking ahead of them, as close to Mirrin as he could. Not that he wouldn't be able to hear them anyway so long as they spoke aloud, but he respected privacy as much as anyone with enhanced hearing could. "Either tell me what it is or keep it off the link."

"Sorry," he mumbled vaguely. "I just didn't... Mirrin's not someone I ever expected to see again. Certainly not here."

Domino nodded. Everything would come out sooner or later, either in the impending X-powwow or when they were on their own. But right now, Nathan was starting to slip into that depressed funk that would only manifest itself as irritation and argumentativeness, so she grabbed his arm as they passed the kitchen and pulled him towards the refrigerator. 

"I'm hungry," she said as he looked at her questioningly. Eyeing the fruit bowl on the counter, illumination struck. "Oh, look. They have Bosc pears. And they're ripe, too. See, it's not genetic."

The pursed lips and matching glare Nathan gave her pleased her immensely. The X-Force kids had explained to her after her arrival years ago that Nathan was forbidden to buy fruit, as he had absolutely no concept of how to pick out good ones. He had claimed it was a family trait, a side effect of being Alaskan. 

"No one said they got them," Nathan replied sourly, his focus now fully back in the present. 

Domino shrugged blithely as she picked two up and headed back the way they had come, towards the stairs that led to the basement complex. "Even if they weren't," she said over her shoulder. "At least they have the good sense to let someone else who can do it, do it."

She felt more than heard his reply along their psi-link.

Bobby was coming out of the Danger Room as they walked past on their way to the conference room across the hallway. "Why am I not surprised that our newest resident psychopath is a pal of yours, Cable?" He asked with his usual good humor. "You gonna introduce us?"

"Actually, Jean and Scott already know her," Nathan answered with suspiciously good humor as they found seats in the already-crowded War Room. Mirrin was seated next to Scott and there were two empty spots on her other side. 

"We do?" Scott asked. 

"They do?" Mirrin asked in Askani.

Domino sat down slowly, not wanting to miss whatever it was that had Nathan suddenly heading towards giddiness. 

"Redd and Slym Dayspring, you remember Min, don't you?" Cable asked, waving his hands as if he were making casual introductions. 

"Min?" Scott repeated. And then comprehension dawned and his eyes opened wide, his eyebrows visible over his glasses. "Not little Min, the one who used to follow you everywhere when we were staying in the north country?"

Mirrin swallowed hard, staring hard at both Jean and Scott. She had known the First Ones all along? She had been only a child when the Dayspring Unit had joined with her Clan to make a difficult land crossing together; she only knew Redd and Slym as the kind ones who had taken Nathan in, who had acted as surrogate parents to her as any of her own Clan had. And while she remembered the faces of Redd and Slym even now - and could see Redd in Jean's face - she had not come in to her telepathy yet and did not sense any familiarity in their minds now. _Oh, Bright Lady, you planned this all so well_, she muttered to herself in a not entirely pleased awe.

Clearing her head with a shake, Mirrin saw Scott - Slym - was still waiting for her to say something. "Following him around is a bad habit I have yet to break, unfortunately." 

Jean watched Mirrin, trying not to stare. Now that Nathan had brought it up, she could see in the young woman's face the resemblance to the child she and Scott had gotten to know during their time in the future. As with Nathan, Mirrin looked world-weary, an unavoidable effect of life in the dark and foreboding future. But what Jean didn't understand was how Mirrin could look so young when she was really only a few years younger than Nathan. 

"Of course," she suddenly exclaimed. "Your telepathic shields. Just like the soap bubbles."

Expectant eyes demanded an explanation. 

"I used to entertain the kids with the bubbles from the washing," Jean elaborated, demonstrating by creating a telepathic image. The resultant bubble grew as it floated over to the table. "Mirrin's shields are like a series of concentric soap bubbles. It's really an ingenious system, almost impossible to get through and very little energy to maintain."

"Fair tidings, friend Gambit," Mirrin said, tilting her head towards the new arrival. 

Remy nodded in return. Sam had taken his suspicion at the news - confirmation of his own story, really - with typical aplomb. Now the biggest problem was simply in the Askani - Mirrin - being a friend of Cable's. Of course, Warren being Warren, he'd probably find something else new to give him cause to be so cold. But for the time being the burden of walking on tenterhooks would now fall on the winged mutant, who now owed him an apology. 

"You knew Cable as a kid?" Bobby asked Mirrin. The whole situation was getting surreal, he felt, so he might as well go with the flow. "You saw the transformation from cute little Nathan Christopher to... this?"

There was an uneasy chuckle through crowded room, easing the tension that had been building before it could become too thick. Friend of Cable though she may be, friends of Cable tended to have the same problem with "thou shalt not kill" that Nathan Summers did - prime example being the violet-eyed woman currently sitting between Cable and Wolverine - and almost everyone in the room had served witness to the mysterious young woman's capacity for murder. 

"Not to this...," Mirrin mimicked Bobby's tone of voice, not quite managing to flatten out her accent. "I am accustomed to a younger version..." 

Jean caught glances with Nathan then and was surprised at his pleading look. Feeling for him, she clapped her hands once. "So, shall we get down to business?" She felt a vague wave of thanks. 

"What do you know about the cyborgs, Min?" Cable asked her in English. "Why are they here?"

"It's not just the cyborgs, Nathan," Mirrin replied sadly. "It is the Kurioon."

Everyone took their cue from Cable, whose face darkened considerably. "How far has it risen?" 

"Faster than I expected," Mirrin answered with a shake of her head. Switching to Askani, she added, "There were Colorless at the last energy harvests. It is too soon for that, even considering the differences of the here-and-now."

Cable cursed. "If they have enough to produce Colorless..."

Cyclops cleared his throat. "Not to interrupt, but the rest of us would be a lot more helpful to your cause if we understood what was going on..."

"The Kurioon is a special unit of Canaanite dog soldiers, intended for long-distance transport," Mirrin spoke slowly, as if trying to negotiate around her accent. "Or in this case, transport through time. They are composed of varieties of cyborgs and are almost always led by mutants. Almost invincible." 

"The soldiers are color coded," Cable continued, leaning back in his seat. "The soldiers Mirrin says you saw in Belize and the Ukraine were early-stage versions, just dangerous enough to protect the Harvesters. We called them 'colorless'." 

Between the two soldiers from the future, the nature and danger of the Kurioon was explained. The worldwide massacres suddenly were no longer mysteries, nor were the disappearances of powerful mutants. 

"Not to throw doubt on your story," Psylocke interrupted, using that peculiarly British tone of voice that dripped irony off of every syllable. "But you said that the people these Harvesters were attacking were helpless civilians... so why were you shooting at harmless women and babes?"

"They weren't harmless," Cable spat out bitterly, irritated that the X-Men were obviously going to get hung up on relatively minor details (there are casualties in war, people, let's move on). "Haight and his men realized that the Resistance would try and save any lives we could. So they created their most dangerous weapons in the form of women and children."

"Trojan horses," Wolverine, thinking back to a little girl named Elsie Dee, murmured loud enough to be heard.

"They're either rigged with explosives or otherwise armed and able to kill everyone who 'rescued' them," Cable confirmed. "They always came with tracking devices."

"Clan Chosen sustained heavy losses in such attacks until we realized that Haight **never** takes hostages," Mirrin added, pausing to remember the legions of dead. "He kills prisoners outright, at least once they have given him whatever it was that made them worth keeping alive in the first place. Anyone they parade in front of us is a cyborg or some other tool of the Canaanites."

"Usually," Cable amended and both Mirrin and Domino eyed him carefully as a strong wave of guilt and grief washed over him. 

#_Cable all right, Jean?_# Not that Psylocke was especially concerned, more that an especially-touchy Cable tended to make everyone's life miserable. 

#_You felt that, too, Betsy? I'm guessing that it's just Nathan reacting to Mirrin. She uses the present tense when talking about these creatures of destruction. This is part of the past to Nathan, or it was until Min showed up._# Jean didn't think it appropriate to mention the age discrepancy just yet. 

#_Bad memories, then._#

"Similarly," Mirrin continued, still watching Cable, "They often use the forms of women and children to protect their own valuables - they hide data chips in vessels that would give any unsuspecting person pause to destroy. It is a strategy that no longer works against the Clan Chosen, but it is one that would find much success in this here-and-now. Especially as your cohort has sworn against taking lives. I did not want you to fall prey, although in hindsight, I imagine the view must have been unpleasant." Here she nodded at Warren and Betsy, who could only nod in agreement. "That was no mortal infant."  
  
"Ah, here is everyone," Hank McCoy cried out as he entered the room, bustling past Betsy. "I was wondering..." his voice tailed off as he saw Mirrin seated next to Cable.

"Doctor," Mirrin said by way of greeting. 

"Take a seat, Hankster," Drake offered, waving his arm expansively. "Or, take a spot leaning against the wall. Henry P. McCoy, meet Mirrin, one of Nathan Christopher's little friends."

"Ahem." Hank frowned and tried to apologize for earlier in spite of Mirrin's protestations. Mirrin would have none of it, however, and a silence fell over the room. 

"Well, now that we've gotten introductions out of the way," Scott began, rubbing his hands together and standing up. He knew from past experience that whatever problems he was going to have hadn't even begun yet - the X-Men always sat and listened carefully at meetings, saving their irrational behavior for later on, when it was impossible to control easily. "Why don't we take five minutes to stretch our legs, go get coffee or something to eat, and we'll start up again."

***

"We can't pursue a 'scorched earth' policy," Domino repeated for the umpteenth time. You knew you were in trouble when _she_ was the one arguing to take it easy. "The population distribution is just too dense for that, Nate. We have to work _around_ the civilians, not through them."

They had been at this for more than an hour, the fundamental differences in philosophy too profound to be ignored for too long. Mirrin and Nathan were inclined to take preventive measures to an extreme - far beyond not only what the X-Men were willing to do, but even beyond what was perhaps reasonable for anyone to do. 

"Besides, how are we going to figure out who to move and when?" Archangel added, sounding tired as he pushed himself back in his seat from where he had been leaning on the table with his elbows. That had been the standard reply to almost any suggestion - how?

"Mirrin already did." Cable gestured towards his clanswoman. "That list of Gambit's was hers."

"If we are not more quickly to action than we were," Storm said ominously, "Then it will be a moot point. Even when we were aware of where to be, we were unable to prevent the destruction of two more villages and all of the lives therein."

Suddenly, Phoenix started. A moment later, Cyclops stood up and left the room. 

"Feel like sharing?" Iceman asked. 

"We've been talking about energy stores and the co-opting of mutant powers," Phoenix replied, brow creased with worry. "But what about when those two needs of this Kurioon are met by one individual?"

"Alex," Rogue hissed. 

"There's no answer," Cyclops said, anxiety creeping into his voice, as came back into the room. "I left a message. He just might be out, but I don't want to take that risk. Anyone up for a trip to New Mexico?"

"Can you 'port us out there?" Cable looked at his clanswoman. "Someone can give you directions."

"A part of the group, but not everyone," Mirrin answered, looking around at the crowded room. "My control is still not perfect in this here-and-now. I know I am capable of greater efforts in this time, but I don't dare risk stranding everyone on the astral plane."

"The astral plane? Is that how your teleportation works?" The Beast perked up. Idly, he noted that the metal strands that had been bonded to her hands had disappeared. 

"As much as I understand the mechanics of it," she nodded, not wanting to discuss the specifics of it. 

"Ay'el, take Domino, Cannonball and me with you and everyone else who's coming along will follow in the Blackbird," Cable ordered as he stood up, getting and keeping eye contact with Cyclops. Unspoken was the agreement between father and son that the former would take care of any lingering issues involving Mirrin. "Cyclops' team will bring the heavy weapons." 

Mirrin stood up automatically at hearing her battle name, only realizing after she got to her feet that it really didn't matter where-and-when it was, she followed his orders without thinking. "I need directions," she told Cable. 

"Redd, can you let Mirrin see an image of where we should go?" he asked, gesturing for Cannonball to join them. 

Phoenix met glances with Mirrin and pushed a memory from the last time she and Scott had visited towards the other woman. 

"I thank you," Mirrin said, bowing her head before turning to Cable. "Let's go."

Cable put his hand on Cannonball's shoulder and held out his other to Mirrin, who took it with the hand not holding Domino's. There was a shimmer and then they were gone. 

"Well," Iceman coughed in surprise. "That was intriguing."

The murmur around the room seemed to concur. 

"Tell me 'bout it," Gambit laughed mirthlessly, shaking his head slowly. 

"I take it our lovely newcomer has discorportated you before," the Beast said. "I really would love to sit her down and get her to describe the mechanics of it..." 

"'That's how she got me back from Antarctica," Gambit answered, looking down so that he didn't have to watch guilt flash across anyone's face. "And a to few other places."

"Mirrin rescued you?" Rogue asked, sounding surprised. She had heard about it earlier, but had chosen not to say anything. "Why?"

Psylocke sighed frowned. Even if Rogue didn't mean it how it had came out...

"Mebbe not everyone t'inks I'm as much a waste of space as you do, chère," an expressionless Gambit replied, shrugging casually before pushing in his chair. "Goin' to get ready to leave."

Rogue was still staring after Gambit when Wolverine's chuckle broke the sudden silence. "Didn't think the Cajun had it in him." Logan was still chortling as he headed for the hangar. 

***

"What the fu..." Alex Summers' hands were glowing brightly by the time he saw who had suddenly appeared in his living room. He had been on his way into the kitchen when the space in front of the couch had started to shimmer with blue light.

"Afternoon," Cannonball greeted Havok, trying to cover up his own embarrassment for arriving unannounced by sounding casual. 

Alex took deep breaths, willing his heart to stop hammering in his chest. Now that the flight-or-fight instinct had been triggered and the correct answer was 'neither', it was hard to make the endorphins go away. "Nathan," he finally began. "While I am pleased and flattered that you have finally come to visit your dotty Uncle Alex, haven't your parents discussed with you the necessity for telekinetics to knock and ring doorbells like everyone else?"

"You always said I could drop by any time," Cable replied as he turned around to face his uncle. 

"So I did. And you brought friends," Alex sighed, partly at the futility of this line of discussion and partly because of what was in his nephew's arms. "Not all of them conscious," he added, noting the young woman being cradled. Not someone he recognized - Scott would have said something about a new teammate - and, judging by what little of her outfit he could see, not a local. 

"What defect in Askani training makes all of you determined to the point of diminished returns?" Domino griped irritatedly, still discombobulated from the teleportation. _Not as bad as Nate's body sliding, but still..._

"Teleporting four across the continent proved a bit much," Cable said tersely, although he privately suspected some aftereffects of the sedatives they had pumped her full of. Mirrin had always reacted strongly to medications. "She's just tired."

"The couch isn't very comfortable for sleeping," Alex warned as Cable started to lay the sleeping girl down. "Take her to my bedroom. Good thing I did laundry today." 

He pointed in the proper direction and Cable nodded and headed off. While he was gone, the other three sat down on the couch. Cannonball tried to explain who Mirrin was. Alex was less surprised than amused, especially after Domino indicated that the woman had been working through Gambit. 

"I got a message from Scott, he sounded worried," he was saying as Cable returned sans Mirrin.

"Your nephew's brought back more trouble from the future," Domino explained, shrugging to indicate that this was neither novel nor news and ignoring the dirty look she was getting from the nephew in question. "This time, they're looking for energy sources."

"And I'm a battery waiting to happen," Alex finished bitterly, cursing genetics for the millionth time. He slapped his knees and stood up. "Well, I suppose I should call big brother back and tell him that I've been found in one piece."

"Ah'm afraid you'll be too late ta reach him, sir," Cannonball said. 

"Blackbird'll be arriving in a while," Cable elaborated. "Just as well. Mirrin's going to be in no shape to 'port us all back. I suppose we should call Jean, though." He got up and headed towards the phone he knew was in the kitchen.

Alex sat down heavily. "Do I really want to know what's going on, or can I just play dumb?"

"It's some kinda cyborg army," Cannonball ventured, not quite sure whether Alex really wanted to play dumb or not. "They've been behind the massacres..."

Alex nodded slowly. "Figures. Well, I suppose I should go pack a bag or something. Would anyone like a drink? Something to eat?"

Cannonball and Domino shook their heads and Alex went off to his bedroom to get some things together. While ideally he'd just be spending a relaxing visit with his family, in reality he knew it was something else entirely. As such, he took down a small backpack from the hall closet en route to his bedroom. _Not that I'll be needing much in the way of clothes - good thing I've been working out on my own, don't want to put on that skin suit and see love handles - but it helps preserve some slight sense of normality. I'm going to stay with my brother and his wife for a few days, that's all. Nothing involving killer robots or mutant hunters or time travel. My nephew and his girlfriend and his protégé and his childhood buddy just came to pick me up, that's all._

Walking carefully to avoid the creaky floorboard just inside his bedroom, Alex paused to take a good look at the woman sleeping on his bed. While Sam had made it sound like she was Linda Hamilton from the Terminator movie, really she just looked like a strangely dressed grad student passed out after an exam. He moved on to his dresser when he heard footsteps in the hall. 

"She's awfully young," Alex whispered over his shoulder as Cable's massive frame filled the doorway. 

#_She's older than she looks,_# Cable answered telepathically. #_I'm not sure when in the there-and-then she came back from, but I'm pretty sure she's older than Sam by this point._#

_You didn't ask?_ Alex was surprised by both the intimacy of the communication - he had never known Nathan to prefer telepathic conversations - and by his... loquaciousness. Back when he was Havok, Alex knew all too well that getting information out of Cable was like prying fillings out of teeth. 

#_We haven't had much time together. I've only known she was here for a few hours and we've been busy since then. Besides, I'm not sure she'd tell me._#

Alex closed his underwear drawer carefully and turned to make a surprised face at Cable. _Sam indicated that you two were... close._

#_Not like **that**_,# Cable retorted, pursing his lips in what Alex could only describe as mild disgust. #_But she always kept a few secrets._#

Alex could almost feel the wistfulness in Cable's mental voice as he noted the tense of speech. 

***

"Jean," Hank called after his teammate. "About our guest..."

"You'll have to talk to her if you want to know about how her teleportation works, Hank," Jean called over her shoulder, not slowing down from where she was headed towards Cerebro. 

"It's not that."

Jean stopped and turned around. Seeing the expression on Hank's face, she frowned. "She is who she says she is," she assured. "I remember her, as does Scott. And Nathan obviously thinks it's the genuine article. I know everyone is uncomfortable with what she's... done... but she was protecting us as best she could." 

The Min she and Scott had met during their honeymoon had been a free-spirited and precocious child, a playful little girl who had taken her self-appointed task as Nathan's shadow quite seriously, much to Nate's embarrassment once he had realized that she meant to 'protect' him. Jean idly wondered if Nathan's conditioning as the Askani'Son and Min's now-obvious membership in the Askani sisterhood had robbed them both of the ability to appreciate the irony of the situation. 

"It's a violent time that she comes from, that they come from. Her survival instincts and sensibilities aren't going to be any different from Nathan's. It's kill-or-be-killed, all the time."

"I don't doubt that," Hank replied, holding up his huge hands in a placating gesture. "Nor do I doubt that she indeed holds a special place in his thoughts, which is no mean feat. I haven't seen Cable quite that protective... well, ever. But have we considered the possibility that she may not be the same person that Nathan remembers her as being?"

"A clone?" Jean raised an eyebrow. "I couldn't tell you, but Nathan..."

"Fair Domino might have something to say about that," he replied wryly. "But I was more pondering the notion that Mirrin may have appeared in this time with something other than Nathan's intentions at heart."

"You think she's changed sides since Nathan came back?" Jean thought back to the fondness she had seen in Min's eyes as she had looked at Cable. There was no regret, no anguish, nothing that would indicate - especially to a telepathic observer - that Mirrin was being anything but faithful to one of her oldest friends. "I didn't see anything."

"I couldn't possibly know for certain," Hank allowed, "But it is a possibility that can not yet be eliminated. Especially if it is a kind of 'sleeper' programming. Considering Nathan's reaction to her, Mirrin would certainly be viewed by the enemy as a prized plum. As naturally suspicious as Cable is, I doubt he'd even suspect her..."

"I would think that she would be the _first_ whom he would suspect," Ororo said quietly as she joined the pair. "_Especially_ after Domino. Cable does not seem the type to allow himself to twice be fooled by the same trick. For what it is worth, Logan sensed no duplicity." 

"Who knows, maybe she's another of Sinister's pets," Warren called over quietly from where he was standing against the opposite wall, presumably waiting for Betsy. 

"Yet she rescued Gambit," Storm reminded. While Rogue was a friend and her reaction to Remy mattered to Storm, Warren was thus far only a teammate. She would trust him with her life, but Ororo felt no compunction to point out his hypocrisy and save him from himself, so to speak. Self-awareness cannot be given; it must be earned.

"And how would that differentiate her from one of Sinister's minion?" Warren asked, wings fluttering in emphasis.

"Warren, please?" Jean buried the flash of anger before it could get anywhere. "Remy's sorry for what happened to you. And we should be sorry for what happened to _him_. Neither of you deserved it. _Neither of you_. But now that you have both survived your ordeals, it is time to put them in the past. Remy is here, you are here, and you will both have to learn to trust each other again."

"Maybe it's time to change the situation, then," Archangel replied flatly, not breaking his glare.

Jean took a deep breath to calm herself. "You're a better man than that, Warren. Running away has never been your style." And for Warren's ears alone, Jean added telepathically, #_I remember once upon a time in the Savage Land when Magneto saved your life and you nearly repaid him by ending ours. We all make mistakes, Warren._# 

Betsy emerged from the ladies' room looking mildly confused, as if she was aware that she was missing something. She raised her eyebrow meaningfully at Warren, who shook his head and indicated that she should precede him upstairs. 

"Right now, I think it is my style. I'm running away upstairs," Warren told Jean, but nodded slightly to acknowledge the telepathic comment before he turned and left. 

After Ororo left them alone, Hank stopped and put a hand on Jean's shoulder. "What did you say to Warren, if I may so inquire?"

"Remember 'the Maker' in the Savage Land?" 

Hank looked blankly at his longtime friend for a moment until recognition set in. It had been early on in their X-Men days, after Scott had found Alex, but before the recruitment of Storm and the others. Just another mission, just another near-fatality. That time it had been Warren, brought back from the dead after an accident to lure the other four into a trap. Warren had no idea he was setting up the pieces for a massacre of many. Just as Gambit hadn't expected it. "I had nearly forgotten that."

"So had Warren."

***

Out in the living room, Sam walked to the window. "Sunset's pretty," he ventured, not sure whether Domino would agree or take his head off for such a comment. But the red and yellow glow on the horizon, framed by the dark ground and the darkening sky, really was nice. Much prettier than the pollution-induced pink glow over New Jersey that was visible from New York.

Footsteps behind him. Domino looked out and Sam could see her eyes soften in appreciation. But before he could feel relieved that Domino wasn't going to ridicule him for being a softie, her brows shot up. "It's gorgeous all right, but there's a problem. That's not the sunset, unless it sets in the east out here."

Sam looked out again. "That's east?"

Domino nodded. "And that's one helluva fire. I hate coincidences," she grumbled as she turned away. "Get ready to bug out."

Alex and Cable were already coming into the room by the time Domino reached them. "Get Mirrin and let's go," she told them briskly. 

"What happened?"

"There's a sunset out your front window," she replied, gesturing with her chin towards the window where Cannonball still stood. 

"But there's nothing to burn out in that direction," Alex said slowly, already understanding what Domino meant. Sunsets were viewed from the bedroom. "It's desert and there's isn't enough brush between here and town to get that kind of glow... town. Damn it."

Cable turned to get Mirrin.

"Arise, fair maiden," Cable whispered gently in Askani with a lightness of tone he didn't feel. He could sense her exhaustion. "The horizon's alight."

"And somehow, I know it isn't sunrise," she answered back groggily, rubbing her eyes, sitting up, and looking around. "I'm assuming we are where we are supposed to be. Are the others here yet?"

Cable sat down on the edge of the bed. "No. We're probably going to have to hide until they do come."

Mirrin made a face. "Are you not armed?"

"That's not the point," he told her. "There are five of us - four of us, really. That teleportation shouldn't have knocked you out, Ay'el."

"I'll be fine," she gritted out, trying not to give lie to her brave words by admitting that the room was spinning. "Is your cohort not all naturally armed?"

"We'll be able to defend ourselves, should it come to that," Cable admitted as he watched Mirrin fight off her dizziness. "But in this case, discretion is the better part of valor."

"You want to _run_, Dayspring?"'

"Sometimes the greatest victories come in the battles not fought," he growled quietly, ignoring her angry glare. "We aren't running. We're falling back until we're ready to fight. You know we aren't ready to take on the Colorless as we are and we don't even know what's out there. The others are coming with weapons and numbers. It would not help our cause should they show up to find us already defeated. Havok himself could power them up to blue, so we can't let him fall into their hands."

Cable got up as Mirrin sighed angrily and swung her legs off of the bed and got up slightly unsteadily, refusing his proffered hand. They went into the main part of the house without another word, although from the matching expressions it was obvious to the other three that there had been some sort of disagreement. 

"Alex says there's a cave near where the Blackbird is going to land," Domino told them. "Unfortunately, that means heading towards the fire."

"Let's go," Cable said, looking around. "We've been sitting ducks here for too long."

"Quack, quack," Domino answered automatically.

The quintet headed towards the jeep parked nearby and Alex got in on the driver's side, thankful that he had topped off the gas on the way home from the market the previous day. The winding cliff-side road was empty, as it usually was, and after a half-hour of unremarkable driving, he was almost about to relax when a bright light flashed and the front left tire blew. Brakes squealing, he tried to see from where the laser had come as instinct guided him to pull the car away from the edge of the road.

"So much for the easy getaway," he sighed as the jeep came to a halt. "The landing pad's on the other side of this mountain."

"The lower-level cyborgs aren't built for mountain climbing," Mirrin said as they exited the vehicle and pressed up against the rock face. "They will have to stay to the road." 

"Can we get to it by climbing down here, or do we have to stay at this elevation?" Domino asked, gun out as she looked around. Alex was a smart driver, but her luck had probably kept them from going over the edge. 

"It's possible, just a lot longer and it gets very tricky in some spots," Alex replied, looking around for possible shooters before he rummaged around in the back of the jeep to find the emergency water canteens. 

"Is there cover, or is it open ground?" Cable asked. 

"Some rock cover and a little brush, but there's enough space for us to be open targets from above," Alex answered, closing his eyes to better visualize the terrain. "But I know the way in the dark." He'd done the trek a few times as a workout, but after the first time, when he had nearly died of sunstroke and Lorna had had to float him back on a makeshift metal gurney, never in daylight.

"We'll have to risk it," Cable said. "The cyborgs will be running on heat sensors and soon our night vision won't be enough to compensate."

They found a spot where the sun-fried roots allowed for handholds to start their descent and slid down carefully to lower ground. The path was wide and relatively flat, so the going was not difficult. The biggest challenge was to avoid tripping in the deepening darkness until they reached a steep drop-off. 

"There a way around this?" Cable called from behind.

"Do you want to break into open ground?" Alex asked.

"Not if we can help it."

"Then no," he replied, stepping aside so Domino could take a look down. 

It looked to be about a thirty-foot drop, too far to jump and to steep to try to slide down the wall without a grappling rope.

"I can bring us down there," Mirrin said as she edged towards the ledge, careful not to bump into Domino. "It's not that far."

"You're still weak," Cable objected. "We'll need you at full strength later."

"It's five body-lengths, Nathan," Mirrin growled. "I could move a battle unit that far by the time I was sixteen. And I don't see any other options that won't give our positions away like a flare."

Domino watched the two glare at each other for a long moment before Nathan nodded curtly and gestured that they should draw closer so that Mirrin could make contact.

A few moments later, they were continuing on through the darkness. 

"Not that I'm complaining or anything," Alex said after twenty more minutes of steady progress over the flat-ish ground of an old hiking path. "But shouldn't they be shooting at us by now?"

"Maybe they're waitin' for us somewhere," Cannonball suggested, hoping that he was wrong. "Could they know where we're headin'?"

"Mirrin and I have been shielding since we left the house," Cable replied, nonetheless looking up at the road circling around the mountain ridge above them. "And I didn't feel any scans before."

Mirrin spoke up. "They could be following our nullspace." 

Cable shook his head. "The entire desert is pretty much null and we're not even sure they have a telepath with them. There's only been one reported missing so far."

"Then we're almost home free," Alex said as he stopped before a sharp bend in the train and pointed. "The bowl and the cave are just on the other side of that ridge."

Getting to the ridge took a little doing, the path being in the opposite direction as the trail and the ground therefore a lot rougher than that which they had already traversed. Once they crossed to the penultimate peak of the ridge, Cable indicated that the others should hang back. He climbed the last stretch alone and looked over. A stream of muttering in Askani drifting down to them sent Mirrin scurrying up to join Cable. 

Not for the first time that day, Domino felt a pang of what she assumed was jealousy - consulting on a course of action was _her_ job - and mentally slapped her wrists. She had just gotten used to the absurd naturalness of the way she and Cable and fallen back into sync, especially after spending the day in Corinth where nothing had happened except banter about when to visit Florence. 

But now there was someone else, someone with as much stake to Nathan, if not more, than she did. You didn't need a psi-link to realize that Mirrin was obviously a significant part of Cable's past. And Domino hated herself for being bothered by that. 

That thought faded, though, as she started to be able to make out some of the words. Domino's Askani vocabulary was restricted almost exclusively to language unfit for public usage. 

"Nate, I know that's not Askani for 'the coast is clear'," she called up in a harsh whisper. 

"Might as well come up here," he called down. "Cannonball, don't blast."

The three joined Mirrin and Cable on the small outcropping. 

"I think I'd rather some of them have been taking pot shots at us before," Alex mumbled as he watched what were probably three dozen soldiers lined up in ready formation in the bowl below. "That way we could have thinned their numbers out a little. Where did they all come from?"

"They've been here a while," Cable replied. "They don't look like they're recharging."

Domino checked her watch. "The Blackbird should be here soon." 

"Can you mind-call them - or Jean - and warn them?" Alex asked. He wasn't sure about the answer - all this time and telepathy was still a bit of a mystery to him. 

"While we don't know for certain that there is a telepath here or not," Mirrin explained, shaking her head. "We can't take the risk that the psionic motion would be detected..." She trailed off, then perked up. "Remember Paloi Lake?"

Cable's eyebrows furrowed for a moment and then he broke into a grin. "It just might work."

"Anytime you feel like cluing us in," Domino sighed tiredly. 

"And ruin the surprise?" Cable asked almost mirthfully. He pointed towards his left. "Cannonball, go with Mirrin and Domino. Alex, come with me. We're going to split up. I'm going to mind-call Jean and Mirrin's going to be the decoy. We'll meet up afterwards. Go!"

Mirrin took off before Domino could voice a protest and she raced to catch up.

"Uh, Sister?" Cannonball called ahead where the two women were climbing over rocks. "Where're we going?"

"A quarter of the way around the bowl from whence we were," Mirrin replied. 

"This isn't going to be one of those decoys where the three of us are going to be running for our lives until the plane lands, is it?" Domino asked and then groaned inwardly. Mirrin was smiling that crooked smile that Nathan got when Domino would ask him those sorts of questions back in their Wild Pack days. If this ended up being a re-run of Nicaragua...

"Not if we are successful," Mirrin answered as she looked over her shoulder. 

"Well, at least it's a better answer than 'oh, ye of little faith'."

"Here is good," Mirrin said and stopped, then tried to climb the nearest outcropping. "Ah, Master Guthrie, could I get some assistance? I can't see the ledge well enough in the dark to teleport up there."

"Yes, Sister," Cannonball replied, then paused as he realized that agreement meant putting his hands on the woman.

"She's not a nun, Guthrie," Domino chuckled. "You can touch her and not be damned to hell."

Sam was immensely grateful for the darkness that hid his furious blush. 

"That's enough, thank you," Mirrin said with a smile after Cannonball finally hoisted her by the waist until she could climb on her own. "Feel free to join me up here."

Cannonball turned to Domino, inwardly praying that he didn't have to give his former teacher a lift up. Especially since Domino knew exactly how much she was embarrassing the hell out of him. 

"I'm gonna go over there," Domino replied, indicating a lower outcropping, trying to hide her amusement at Cannonball's obvious inner distress. No need to rub it in too much. "Stay close to Mirrin."

Surveying the scene below, Mirrin started to work. "This might tickle," she warned. 

Almost exactly across from the trio, Alex and Cable watched the scene below. The soldiers were unmoving, eerie in their stillness.

"How will you know when it's safe?" Alex whispered. 

"You'll see."

A moment later, he felt a tingle run down his spine. "Nathan..."

"That's our sign. Watch." Cable gestured with his chin to the spot where their tiny group had split up. 

Suddenly, without so much as a flicker, five forms appeared. Alex had seen Professor Xavier's telepathic projections before, and Psylocke had gotten pretty good at projecting herself where she was not, but these were truly impressive replicas of the five of them. 

Alex was dumbfounded, however, to see the projection of himself jump up to the top of the bowl ridge, hands glowing, and fire a plasma bolt down upon the regiments of foreign soldiers below. Mirrin had never seen him in action, didn't even know that he had a uniform, yet the projection version was correct down to the expression on his face when he fired his blasts. 

"How'd she..." but his voice tailed off as it became apparent that Cable wasn't listening. Alex suspected that he was trying to mind-call Jean. 

A laser blast brought his attention back to the scene before him. The laser was from the suddenly active soldiers below, most of who seemed to be mobilizing towards the spot that the projections had just vacated. 

From her perch, Domino watched with concern. The troops were marching quickly up the dirt road and would soon be at the same elevation as they were. Should any of the troops break formation to chase after the five of them, they'd be in for one hell of a battle. She felt for her gun, which was where it was supposed to be but still felt quite insufficient.

"Where're they goin'," Cannonball asked Mirrin as the robot troops marched forward without even pausing to look in the direction they were standing in. Although, with their mirrored faces, Sam wasn't sure they could look at all. 

"They are following their quarry down the path we ourselves came." The Askani woman was not even facing the action, however. Instead, she was leaning against the rock, eyes closed in concentration. "Their unfamiliarity with the terrain in addition to their limited climbing abilities should buy us some time. Especially if we can get them some distance away."

"Sister..." Sam began hesitantly. "How come none of the robots came after us?"

"They're following the freshest psi tracks, if I've got it right," Domino answered as she hopped down from her perch. "If you're getting shot at from three sides, you go for the one where you can still smell the gunpowder."

Mirrin opened her eyes and nodded. "An ancient and worthy strategy, except when battling psionic powers."

"How come I was carrying my old flamethrower," Domino asked after a moment. "And how'd you know what Havok looks like?"

"My images were based on how you see yourself in battle," Mirrin explained as she jumped down. "Can you see Nathan and Alex?"

"Ah think Ah see Alex lightin' the way," Cannonball reported. "Can you teleport them here?"

"I need close proximity, if not physical contact," Mirrin replied with a quick shake of her head. 

The trio waited, watching the remaining robot troops reform ranks in the bowl below. Only about a dozen of the troops had marched past them, so the numbers were still close to being suicidally imbalanced, Domino decided, but not quite at that critical mass that she'd fight Nathan if he wanted to attack them. If they were going to have to avoid an energy-based offense, they were a little light on the weaponry, however, so she hoped Nate had had a good conversation with Jean. 

"What now?" Domino asked once their impromptu team was together again. 

"Blackbird's still about a half-hour away," Cable reported. "But it's going to land somewhere else."

"Didn't trust your casualty approximations?"

Cable shrugged, that 'you can't expect to fight a war without killing' shrug that often accompanied any discussion of the X-Men, at least when he wasn't in the mood to argue about it. "Let's get going."

"Are we going to run into those robots?" Cannonball wondered aloud as they started to climb back down to the trail they had abandoned earlier. "Surely they must've figured out that they're chasin' ghosts by now."

"We're not going back the way we came," Alex replied, hoping that that would solve their problems.

"We shall no doubt run into a few," Mirrin added, trying to balance after stumbling on a loose rock. "But that is better than running into all."

The group started walking along the trail again. The path was less treacherous geographically, but it was entirely through ground completely visible from above and even the slightest noise was grounds for falling into combat formation with arms drawn. Finally they reached the point where they would have to move away from the edge of the mountains and into open ground and the group paused, intending to wait until the plane arrived before moving out into an area where there was absolutely no protection except for isolated rock groupings. They stood pressed against the rock wall, relaxed but ready.

"There's the plane," Domino said, pointing up as a blur sped overhead. All that was visible was a patch of darkness against the otherwise star-filled night, but a strong gust of wind blew sand in all directions.

"Let's go," Cable ordered, taking one last look around and above. "Alex, start."

If they weren't at risk of fire from behind, Alex could have lit the way in what was fast becoming pitch darkness of the moonless night. But now they would be running a series of flat sprints between rock formations. He just hoped he didn't trip. 

The rock groupings weren't large enough for everyone to hide behind, so they leapfrogged in pairs with Cable by himself. By the last one, after which everything would be an open dead run, Alex ventured a look behind him. "Wonder if they'll know where to find us."

"Ah really don't think that's gonna be a problem," Cannonball hissed as he and Mirrin became the last to arrive. "The sound of gunfire'll give us away."

Turning around, they could see two dozen or so soldiers, arms poised at the ready, running towards them in formation. The soldiers started firing even before they were within range. Cable and Domino started to return fire as Cannonball blasted into the air and Mirrin pulled Alex behind the rock.

"Ahh!" Cannonball cried out as a laser shot hit his shoulder and he fell from the air to the ground. He had been blasting, so it was just the concussion, not an actual wound, but it didn't matter. The shock, Cannonball decided, was for the moment worse than the pain.

Mirrin grabbed the stunned Cannonball and pulled him behind her. "Extend your blast field, Samuel. Reflect and repel, don't absorb." Right arm braced as a shield, she pointed her left at the soldiers. Blasts of light issued from the metal ribbons on her extended hand while the bracelet on her other wrist seemed to be generating some sort of small shield. 

Cannonball nodded mutely and with a deep breath, blasted up again. Considering the situation, he realized he'd be better running defense than offense and moved closer to Cable and Domino.

Domino felt for her extra clip without ceasing to fire, counting on her luck to avoid getting shot as she stood above the glowing border of Cannonball's blast shield. But while her luck (and the blast field) held, her offense didn't. "Hey, Nate, is there any part of them that doesn't deflect whatever we shoot?"

"Insides of elbows, backs of knees..." he replied as he threw up a telekinetic bubble to shield them from the laser fire. Without his bigger guns, he felt like he was flinging pebbles.

_I hate this, I hate this, I hate this..._ "Would setting myself to 'deep fry' help?" Alex asked, hands glowing.

"Isn't that just what they want?" Sam asked in reply, still half-crouched before Domino from when he had been blasting. His shoulder still smarted and he idly wondered how sore it would be the following day. 

"These aren't Harvesters," Mirrin called over. "I'll cover you." She nodded at Cable, who pulled back the shield to leave Mirrin and Alex exposed. She stood in front of him, crouching as Cannonball had, to allow Alex to fire his plasma blasts.

"Ugh, burning flesh," Domino groused as the last of the soldiers fell. 

"Ah thought you said these weren't human," Cannonball accused as they started running in the direction the plane had been traveling. 

"They're not. But their skin is," Cable answered. "Backup's on its way."

"You got the Blackbird?"

"No point in hiding psi patterns now," he replied, not breaking his gallop. 

Running through open desert meant that seeing and being seen were equally possible, so it was with great relief that Alex reported that he saw help on the horizon just as Domino called out that the next wave of troops were closing in from the other side.

The three groups met explosively. Mirrin was shielding a noticeably depleted Alex, supplementing his weakening plasma blasts with her own weapons as Gambit, Wolverine, Cyclops, and Iceman caught up to them. Cable's telekinetic shield was showing its first signs of softening under the barrage, but before the tell-tale smell of ozone got too strong, an ice wall bought the group time to run. 

"Ay'el, get Alex out of here," Cable called as the laser blasts broke through the icy barrier. "He's done all he can." Left unsaid was that Alex was now wobbly on his feet and would slow down their retreat to the plane.

Alex heard Mirrin mutter something in a language he didn't understand as she grabbed his hand and dragged him towards Cable. His nephew let out something sounding suspiciously like a string of curses as she reached out for him as well. And then the world shimmered.

* * *

http://www.geocities.com/nikimarzione/ 


	8. Future Pluperfect 8: History Repeating

Future Pluperfect: Chapter 8 

* * *

"AAH!" Rogue yelped in surprise as she slammed the refrigerator door. "Y'all couldn't knock or somethin'?"

"Sorry," Alex mumbled, still too dazed to appreciate the absurdity of the moment. One minute they were dodging lasers in the desert, the next he was standing in the kitchen in Westchester. "I think I need to sit down," he wobbled towards the table and dropped into a chair.

"Stab your eyes, Mirrin! What the flonq did you do that for?" Cable yelled loudly in Askani as he wheeled sharply. "I was needed. Nobody here-and-now knows how to fight the Kurioon..."

Rogue edged away from the refrigerator and out into the hallway, running quickly through the dining room to re-enter closer to the table where Alex was and further away from where Mirrin and Cable were glaring at each other. She was partially invulnerable, after all, so it probably wasn't too seemly to appear to be cowering. "If looks could kill," she murmured to Alex, who looked at her tiredly, but nodded in understanding. 

"They know how to run, which is what we were doing. You are needed here, Dayspring," Mirrin answered, completely unfazed by Cable's massive form standing almost on top of her. This wasn't the first time Nathan had taken issue with her actions and presumably it wouldn't be the last. "You are needed alive."

"I would have stayed so without trouble, Ay'el." He used her battle name mockingly. She had dragged him away after scorning him for wanting to avoid a fight?

"I chose not to take that chance, _Askani'Son_." The same mocking tone echoed back and Nathan narrowed his eyes in irritation. 

By now they had drawn a crowd, but neither of them was paying attention. Hank and Warren had come in from the drawing room where they had been watching BritComs (contrary to popular opinion, Hank _did_ leave the lab) and while Warren was happy to block most of the doorway with his massive wings, Hank was crouched before Alex trying to look him over. 

"It was not your decision to make," Nathan growled. Mirrin never pretended to be very good at following orders. At least _his_ orders. "You can't keep me away from the battle forever."

"I've done sufficiently well so far."

"You've yet to succeed! Tonight was just the latest - I've been in the battle since you accidentally left Evensea Isthmus on that list for Gambit. It was only chance that Dom and I didn't face anyone."

"You haven't figured that out yet?" Mirrin laughed cruelly and Nathan eyed her closely. Mirrin had never been tolerant when it came to people understanding or not understanding her and he had so rarely been on the wrong side of that line. 

"What out?"

"I _knew_ that that place is called Corinth in this time," she explained impatiently. "I also knew that there would be no Harvesters there. You are predictable, Askani'Son. I knew you would go there only with your most trusted soldiers. I meant to keep you and yours sufficiently away from the fighting so that if your compatriots could not handle the battle, you would still be safe."

Cable didn't reply. Instead, he just stared at his clanswoman with a cross between disbelief and something approaching disgust, his gold eye glowing dangerously bright, shaking his head slowly. Finally he turned towards the door, ready to storm out, but then turned back on his heel. 

"You would play coward for me? Hide me while mine were slaughtered? You were there, Ay'el, you were there with me when the therm went off. How the flonq could you do that to me again?" 

The room echoed with his bellow and Rogue, Warren, Hank, and Alex exchanged a nervous glance. 

"I had no intention of letting anyone get slaughtered, Nat'an," she sighed, intentionally using the name that she had called him in her youth even as she continued in the formal speech that Askani were trained to use around the Chosen Family. "That is why I was attendant at both fronts. I had to make sure that your cohort could handle things without casualty. I would have time-ripped over and over again to assure that no one was harmed seriously. That's why they got me. I was too tired to stop Psylocke from shooting me with that dart."

Nathan took a deep breath and ran his hand over his face, but the anger remained. Burning slower, but with no less heat. 

"You can't keep me from everything. I can't sit around and watch you fight the Kurioon. I won't be that helpless again and I won't run and hide. You'll just have to work with me instead of around me... and I'll boot you back there-and-then myself if you try anything like that again. I'm not the man you left behind there-and-then."

"I am charged with keeping both of you alive. I will not be derelict in my duty," she replied fiercely, then suddenly dropped to a near whisper. "I would rather draw your ire than fail and be forced to honor your memory in your stead."

Cable's golden eye flashed blindingly for a moment and the spectators braced for another bellow in a language none of them knew. But what followed instead was hardly more than a whisper, one which carried much more of a threat than any shout. 

"You can't play both sides, Ay'el. Not like this. You are welcome to stay as my clan-mate, but I won't let the Sisterhood pull my strings. Not anymore. Don't dishonor the Clan Chosen by using them to further Askani aims."

Mirrin's eyes blazed, but she said nothing. 

"Choose wisely whom you represent, Ay'el," Cable continued, emphasizing her battle name, "Because neither side will take well to your turning traitor." 

"How dare you accuse me of dishonoring the Clan!" she hissed, the obeisant posture all but gone and replaced with a challenging stance. "How _dare_ you forget all that I have sacrificed, all that I _will_ sacrifice. You are not the only one who hurts, Dayspring. Don't make me the villain just to ease your passage. We all have deserts to cross."

Nathan started at her words. How much did she know? But her defiant glare chased away those thoughts. "Then start acting like a warrior for Clan Chosen. You left injured comrades behind," he ground out.

"The High Lord will live," Mirrin said, backing off and shrugging. "It is what he does."

"You also left no one to shield. Cannonball is almost wiped out. Their back flank will be open until they reach the plane. If the Blackbird doesn't get shot down."

"The ice will function well enough and the jet is supersonic. When did you get so dubious of your unit's ability to fight without your presence? Have you not left the battle raging there-and-then?"

Cable was about to respond when a loud clearing of a throat silenced him. 

"Are you two finished yet?" Jean asked in a too-sweet voice from where she was standing, arms crossed, in front of Warren. "You've probably woken half the neighborhood."

Mirrin looked mildly chastened, while Cable looked indignant. "My apologies, Redd," Mirrin said, bowing her head.

"That tickles," Alex muttered as he batted ineffectually at Hank, who was trying to check his pupils. "I'm just tired. I made much plasma...," he almost giggled.

"Is the rest of the team all right?" Cable asked, not breaking his cold stare at Mirrin, who was pretending not to notice.

"A bit pissed that she didn't teleport all of them," Psylocke said as she appeared in the doorway, indicating Mirrin with a jut of her chin. "But they're back to the Blackbird. Drake was saying something about wringing blood out of stones."

"Water out of the desert," Alex offered, still more than a little lightheaded. He hadn't noticed the effect of teleporting down the cliffside, but he felt more than the usual buzz from heavy use of his powers. Or maybe you're just out of superhero-shape... Cable and Mirrin certainly didn't seem to be affected. But of course, one of them must be used to it and the other, well, was his nephew...

"It seems Robert is getting poetic in his adult years," Hank commented cautiously, hoping to prevent any backsliding into further argument. "I am a good influence on him, after all."

"Yeah, an' that's why the boy's got a Twinkie addiction that he just can't quit," Rogue added from her corner. 

"Twinkie?" Mirrin looked at Jean, not at Cable, for an explanation. She had the feeling whatever it was wasn't that important, but it would keep Nathan from being able to continue haranguing her. He had stopped glaring at her, but she could still feel the anger coming off of him in waves. They would continue this argument in the future, just as this chapter was but a continuation of past fights. The frustration would keep.

"Ah, my fair maiden of the future," Hank began as he stood up from where he was crouched by Alex. "Twinkies are one of our time's greatest delights."

There was a bark of laughter that echoed throughout the kitchen and McCoy frowned in its face. 

"Surprised the damned things didn't last until your time," Betsy quipped. "They certainly've got enough chemicals in them."

The Beast pointedly ignored his colleague and extended an arm out to Mirrin. "Why don't I treat you to one of my special supply whilst I survey your vital signs. Shall we adjourn to the med lab?" 

"I am not injured," Mirrin protested. 

"There will be no repeat of last evening's unfortunate misunderstanding," Hank shook his head, guessing correctly at the emotions flashing across hooded eyes. "For which I still have not adequately apologized..."

"Go with him," Nathan spoke in Askani battle language, not any of the dialects used within the Clan Chosen. He had not forgiven her yet. "You need to be looked at."

"I am just tired," she told him, shaking her head. "I did not sleep last night and it has been a long day."

"Go, before I tell him that you passed out teleporting before."

Jean stood primed to interrupt if the argument exploded again, as it looked like it was about to judging by the matching expressions and the tension that almost crackled between the two warriors. But Mirrin just muttered something in Askani and followed Hank towards the med-lab. 

Ten minutes later, after Betsy had gone back to Cerebro, Alex had wandered off to the living room to crash, and Warren and Rogue had gone off to rooms unknown, Jean and Nathan were left alone in the kitchen. 

"What did Min do?" Jean asked hesitantly as she guided Nathan to the kitchen table. He and Mirrin hadn't been speaking any language Redd Dayspring had known, but basic human instinct led her to believe that Mirrin had contravened orders. 

"She acted like an Askani sister, not like a Clan Chosen fighter," Nathan replied, his anger spiking back up again even as he let himself be led. "I'm not going to be treated like a flonqing infant by someone I sponsored through the Rite of Passage."

Jean nodded in sympathy - she was all too familiar with the Askani tendency towards autocracy. And then she changed the subject. "You sponsored her?" 

The Rite of Passage was a somewhat mystical tradition in the future, an attempt to recreate a formal recognition between childhood and adulthood that the tale-tellers said went back to the dawn of civilization. The ceremony varied from place to place, but the basic idea was the same - the intended's elders vowed before the group that their child was able to assume responsibility. It was supposed to be a parent's honor and joy, if they went for that sort of thing, and Scott was still upset that he never was able to perform that service for Nathan. Killing Apocalypse had been a sort of substitute, but that was small comfort in light of having to abandon him so quickly afterwards. 

"Tetherblood's a kinsman, but he had been nearly incinerated by a landmine the week before, so Aliya and I stood in," Cable replied, allowing his anger at Mirrin to be transmuted into something more personally painful. Just seeing Mirrin had put him out of sorts and he had yet to adjust. 

Jean nodded. "Were they close? Aliya and Min?" Jean felt bad for dragging Nathan towards what where undoubtedly unpleasant memories. But, as much pain as she knew she was causing, she knew that there was work to be done once Cyclops and the others returned. And an introspective Cable was easier to deal with than an irate one. 

"Like sisters. Beyond the Askani allegiance." Aliya and Min, Dawnsilk and Hope... Fierce warriors all, but without lifting a plasma rifle the quartet had had most of the men in the Clan Chosen's inner circle wrapped around their little fingers. The four of them, T-blood had said, would be the death of he and Nathan both. Yet in the time Nathan had left, two of the women were now dead, one impossibly damaged, and the fourth raged against Nathan at every opportunity. And Tetherblood and Nathan remained, untouched except for the soul, to bear witness to memories of happier days long gone. 

There was a long, thoughtful silence before Jean spoke again. "Do you want to wait until everyone gets back to debrief?" 

"Not much to tell," Nathan shrugged, still deep in thought. "We got there about an hour before they would have gotten Alex, we ran into some trouble, and we got out of it."

"We'll wait, then. I'm sure Domino and Sam can add details to whatever you and Alex have to say," Jean replied. Just because she had succeeded in depressing him didn't mean she had to cater to it. It made her feel slightly less guilty that way. 

"I'm going to check on Mirrin," Nathan said after another long silence. He stood up slowly, as if just realizing how drained he was. "I have questions for her. And I don't want her 'convincing' McCoy that she's fine."

"Is she not?"

He shrugged. "I doubt anything's really wrong. She's exhausted and she's probably still loaded up with whatever Psylocke shot her full of to take her down. She never reacted well to sedatives... What are you laughing at?"

"You. Mirrin is acting just like you do and you're acting just like Scott and I do."

Nathan paused for a moment and then shook his head. "I love you, Redd, but if you tell Scott that I'm turning into him, I'm going to have to kill you both."

Jean failed to curtail her giggles and shrugged as she left the room. 

***

"Okay, Min, time to talk," Cable said as walked back in to the med-lab. Hank had allowed him to stay as long as he kept quiet, but had thrown him out the moment he had tried to interrogate Mirrin. Now that McCoy was finished and waiting for the results of the blood tests he had started, Cable was allowed to return. 

"You look good, Nathan." Min surprised him by smiling gently and without sarcasm. It did not escape her notice that he had finally switched from the Askani battle language to informal speech. 

Argument or not, both of them knew that Mirrin could no more deny her Askani vows than Nathan could reject his place as the Askani'Son. Most of the time, the two identities - member of Clan Chosen and piece of the Askani puzzle - could exist in uneasy peace. Nathan Dayspring had never really understood how treacherous it was to negotiate the border, but Nathan Summers had a growing appreciation for the difficulty. 

"You look more alive," she elaborated. "I'm glad to know that you don't spend the rest of your days as you were when I left you... although I can still sense it. The darkness, I mean."

"I've had a long time to think and to experience," he said too casually, tightening his mental shields as well as he could. "The... pain isn't gone. It never will be. It's just been a while since I left..." 

He didn't want to think about that time, not with a powerful telepath so close by. Shielding from Mirrin was much different than shielding from Jean or Betsy. Mirrin was subtler in her techniques, more ready to use them, and had always had a greater freedom of access to his thoughts than anyone but Aliya. Not only would she know he was hiding something, but she'd also be suspicious about why.

"No offense," Mirrin prefaced as she reached out to touch his face, "but I can see the years."

"As do I when I see none on you," he murmured, returning the gesture. When he allowed himself to think of Mirrin, this was how he remembered her."When are you coming from?" 

"You know I can't tell you that."

"You always pick the damnedest times to obey Sanctity, you know that?" It was less question than comment and carried only a fraction of the bitterness that had been on display earlier in the kitchen. They had had this discussion countless times before and both knew that Mirrin would have it countless times again with his younger self. "What _can_ you tell me?"

"I'm here to keep you one step ahead of the Kurioon," she replied with a knowing sigh. He wasn't going to stay angry with her over withholding information. 

"Who sent it?"

"The retro-cogs don't know. At least they didn't when I was sent back. We don't even know how they got here-and-now. It wasn't by Tinex."

Cable ran his fingers through his hair and nodded. There wasn't really anything else to be asked - that Mirrin would answer, at least - that hadn't been covered earlier. Except...

"How did you know Sam was a High Lord?" 

"He feels like one?" Mirrin offered weakly with a shrug she knew didn't pass as casual. She knew she had erred by referring to Cannonball as such, but had hoped Nathan hadn't picked up on it. 

"Barely," Nathan replied, shaking his head. "And not strongly enough that you'd know what it was if you weren't looking for it. He's just come into his own with that. How did you know, Min?"

Mirrin weighed her options. She could feel how protective Nathan was of the young High Lord - hardly surprising from what she knew - and knew the odds of getting him to drop the subject were slight. At least without a mind wipe, and that wasn't an option she'd like to choose. If he persisted, however, there was a chance Sam might become suspicious...

"Because he told me." 

"What? When?" Cable tried to think of any time that day that Sam and Mirrin had been together without his being present. Being an External certainly wasn't a fact that Sam was comfortable with, let alone enough to bring up in casual conversation. 

Mirrin's chuckle answered the question, however. 

"You've met him in another time, haven't you?"

"If I say yes, will you drop the subject? I'm not going to tell you anything about it." 

Mirrin sounded amused more than defensive, so Nathan felt comfortable in pushing. 

"Why won't you?"

"Because I don't want you flonqing anything up, Nate. And if I find out that you've tried, I'll send a timestream full of sisters back to knock you into submission." Despite the similarity to the threats that had been levied before, this one had a smile attached to it. Not that Nathan doubted for a moment that she was serious. 

"I knew letting you go back to Ebonshire was a mistake," he sighed half-heartedly.

Mirrin shrugged. "You always blame Ebonshire for everything."

"And I'm usually right. Re-forming the colony was probably one of the worst moves we ever made. Aliya and her nostalgia... she forgot that she hated the place while she was there." He fought off both pain and love as he remembered a few of the arguments with his wife that had been centered around the re-establishment of the Askani sisterhood's traditional home. There hadn't been much left after the original massacre and even less after the sequel brought on by 'Strator Umbridge's betrayal, but Aliya had insisted. And Mirrin had backed her up every step of the way. 

"Or maybe she just knew more than she was telling you, Askani'Son."

"Don't start, Min, please don't start," Nathan implored. Privately, he chastised himself for his... nervousness. The very idea that Mirrin and Aliya had had some plan... 

"There you two are," Cyclops said as he walked into the med lab. "Hank sent me in to make sure you weren't recreating the Spanish Inquisition in his precious lab." Actually, Jean had been more concerned that the two of them would be doing telepathic damage to each other, but Hank _had_ asked. 

"Is everyone all right?" Mirrin asked, hoping to distract Nathan before he said something rude. 

"We'll be shaking sand out of our hair for a while, but otherwise, yeah," he replied, looking around as if the room was unfamiliar to him. "Why don't you two come upstairs? It's more comfortable..."

Happy to flee both the medical lab and Cable's questions, Mirrin hopped down from the bed she had been sitting on and moved towards the door. She could feel Nathan glower behind her, but heard his footfalls on the steps as she came upstairs. 

The de-briefing was informal and mercifully short. There wasn't much to be done until morning, and after Mirrin and Cable convinced the others that the soldiers would not look around for substitutes having failed to capture Alex, the group broke up for the night. Jean was relieved to notice that Nathan was cooled down to a barely noticeable seethe. 

"Min, do you want to stay here?" Cable asked as he eyed Domino stifling a yawn. "I'm going to take Dom back to my place in Manhattan."

"You don't stay here?" It was stupid question - Mirrin having stayed in Nathan's own bed - but she didn't think Nathan was in the mood to know just how close she had been. 

"Not if I can help it," he replied, making a face. Switching to English, he added, "You can come if you'd feel more comfortable away from here..." 

"Mirrin is welcome to stay," Scott interrupted, mildly irritated at Nathan's blatant attempt to guilt them all. "We have plenty of space that's not reminiscent of a prison."

Mirrin herself fiddled with the sleeve of the sweatshirt she had been given to wear ("We can fabricate something that will fit you better or I'm sure one of us can loan you something..." "This is fine, thank you." "But it's so big." "But it's made from plants.") and looked at Nathan thoughtfully. "I'll stay here," she said, perfectly aware of how much her presence was disturbing him. 

"I'll see you in the morning," Nathan replied, almost successfully hiding his relief. 

"Dream well," she said, getting up from her seat to embrace him gently. "You as well, Domino," she added. 

Domino smiled uneasily and nodded. She jingled Jean's car keys ("No, Nate, let Domino drive. It will take me a week to get the driver's seat re-adjusted if you sit in it.") and she and Nathan left. 

There was an awkward silence in the aftermath of their departure. 

"So," Bobby said as he stood up and clapped his hands in anticipation. "Is this where we drag out Cable's baby pictures and get Mirrin to tell everyone about all of the embarrassing things he did as a teenager?"

"No," Hank replied with a bemused frown. "This is where we find something for Mirrin to eat before Rogue takes her up to the spare room next to hers and lets Mirrin sleep away some of the exhaustion that she is fighting off." 

"I am fine," Mirrin protested, but a growl from her stomach argued otherwise.

"And some food energy would be a good idea for Alex as well... where is he?" Hank wondered, looking around. 

"Asleep on the couch," Cyclops reported as he came back into the kitchen. "I'll go get him."

"Okay," Rogue announced as she opened up the refrigerator, idly remembering that this was exactly what she had been doing just when all the excitement had begun. "There are bagels, probably some leftover pizza, some of the spaghetti from before... that looks like Betsy's tuna salad, and ya don't want that..."

"Eesh." A groggy Alex made a face as he staggered into the kitchen, half-pushed by his brother. "You woke me up for Betsyfood? I'm not the one with the cast iron stomach, Scott."

"Miss Braddock is a remarkable woman of many talents," Hank explained to a confused-looking Mirrin. "But despite her exposure to many cultures, she still maintains the culinary tastes and commensurate cooking skills of a Briton."

"That's fancy talk for saying that Betsy's still English and the English can't cook," Bobby explained without removing his head from the cabinet he was currently rummaging through. "Ooh. Hot cocoa and a bag of mini-marshmallows. I'm set. Get out the milk, wouldya please, Rogue? Want some, Mirrin? It's good stuff."

Before Mirrin could say anything, Scott broke in. "It's not what it looks like, Min. Milk is a child's drink here..."

"Milk is everyone's drink," Hank contradicted sternly. "Everyone needs calcium. And it has many other good things that would be beneficial for an overtired time traveler."

"What did we say, Mirrin?" Alex looked at her from across the table, not sure whether to be concerned or amused at her wide-eyed expression. "Or is the general lunacy just getting to you? We're a bit much even for people who didn't just pop in from the thirty-eighth century."

"A cultural difference, that is all," she replied, clearly embarrassed in her confusion. "In my time, milk is consumed only in establishments of... somewhat less that sterling repute."

"So I just offered you watered down beer, huh?" Bobby asked, cheerfully awed at the idea of milk being an illicit substance. "There's some instant soup if you'd like that instead."

"Actually, I am in a milk bar sort of mood," Mirrin replied with a sly smile. "But what are you accompanying it with?" She gestured to the bag in his hand.

"Great delicacies, especially since no one ever bothers to get the mini kind," Bobby answered sagaciously as he tore open the bag of marshmallows carefully. 

"Go shoppin' sometime, Bobby, 'stead of naggin' everyone else," Rogue retorted as she carried the gallon of milk to the counter. "The mugs are right behind ya, Mirrin, in the cabinet on the left. If ya don't mind..."

Mirrin stood up and found the mugs. Reaching in with her left hand, the first mug simultaneously appeared in her right one, which was stretched out towards Bobby and Rogue. When nobody took it, Mirrin turned. Everyone was watching and Mirrin blushed, concerned that she had committed some sort of breach in etiquette for using her powers so frivolously. 

"Neat trick," Alex barked out a laugh, breaking the silence and sparking everyone else into motion. "That's better than lighting cigarettes or anything I can do."

"I find it useful on occasion," Mirrin replied with an embarrassed smiled before turning away to get the rest of the mugs. 

After the hot chocolate was finished, the group that was left in the kitchen sat silently. It had been a long day, a long week, for them all and finally armed with a little knowledge of what was going on, they could sleep a little easier. 

Rogue finally stood up and waved at Mirrin. "C'mon, sugah, Ah kin carry you, but Ah suspect you'd rather walk. And since ya ain't got what ta sleep in, let's go find you a pair of PJ's."

The two headed off to the women's wing, Rogue slowing down so as to let Mirrin look around curiously, stopping off in Rogue's room to pick up a pair of pajamas. 

"Do you know if Gambit might still be awake?" Mirrin asked once they were in her own temporary room. 

Rogue shrugged. "Ah suppose he is. Prob'ly up on the roof smokin'. Does that after a mission. Why?"

Mirrin sat down on the bed and leaned over to undo her boot laces. "Many things have happened today and I have yet to thank him for all that he has done."

"That's Remy for ya," Rogue replied with a casualness she knew wasn't going to fool a telepath. "Doin' on the sly."

Mirrin sat back up after toeing off her boots. "Why do you hate him?"

"What?" Rogue spun around from where she had been looking out the window.

"When I found him, your hatred of him was on his mind. It distressed him more than dying of exposure," Mirrin explained. 

"Ah don't." Rogue stumbled over the words. "Ah did, at least Ah thought Ah did, but Ah don't... Ah just haven't gotten 'round to tellin' him that... Ah gotta go. Sleep well."

Rogue fairly fled from the room. 

"Thank you," Mirrin called gently after her. That hadn't been the intended reaction, but at least Mirrin now had a better understanding for the situation. "Same for you."

Sitting down on the bed, Mirrin extended her thoughts carefully. There were many people in the house, some still conscious, but finding him was easy enough. 

#_Gambit?_# She was careful of his shields, which she had found were much stronger now that they were in the presence of other telepaths.

_Oui, chère._ He sounded tired and a little suspicious. 

#_I wanted to thank you. I cannot say I understand your feelings of guilt, but I better appreciate now what you risked by aiding me._#

_De rien. Suppose I'm just a sucker for a belle fille._ The suspicion was gone, replaced by mild amusement.

#_She is pretty. Patience, friend Gambit. Patience._#

He chuckled sadly in her mind, then wished her good night. 

***

"What's bothering you?" Domino didn't take her eyes off the road. "Apart from Mirrin yanking you out of New Mexico."

"I'm almost past the teleportation," Nathan replied too casually. "She's always gone Askani on me at inconvenient times. It was too much to home for that this wouldn't be one of them."

"And the rest of the reason you're somewhere between maudlin and suicidal?"

"Huh? There's nothing." He didn't stop looking blearily out of the passenger window. "I'm fine. Just tired."

Domino muttered obscenely to herself before turning her frustration outwards. "Nate, if you're going to lie so pathetically, do me a favor and re-block the link so you don't throw it in my face?"

There was silence for a moment, and Domino counted three overpasses before he sighed. 

"She's dead. And now, for however long, she's not." _And I don't want to go through it again._

This was pretty much what Domino expected. The pain that had poured down the link when Nathan had first seen Mirrin had been heart-breaking. Almost as bad as when they had encountered Jenskot.

Domino slowed down and let a Porsche pass her. Past experience told her that Nathan was going to shut down once they got back to the safehouse, so the more time spent talking here... "It's been a while, then."

"She was... is... only a few years younger than me. Six years? Seven years? Always acted older, though..." he trailed off. Always acted haunted, actually. "Long ago enough that I can't figure out when she's coming from... She looks like how I remember her, but I don't know at what point I took my mental picture... It was a few years after Aliya. At least it started then."

"It started?"

"The first time she died," Nathan explained with a humorless laugh that sounded close enough to hysteria that Domino took her eyes off the road to watch him. But he didn't look like he was about to lose control, so she went on. 

"She died twice?" She'd be perfect for the X-Men, Domino thought idly. 

"The first time, we just thought she was dead. Or as good as dead. The second time... we knew for sure," he answered. His voice was gravelly, not breaking, but definitely wavering. 

Domino didn't know what to do. Nathan was so against any display of weakness, so uncomfortable with showing his emotions, that she didn't want to make a point of recognizing that he had by doing something like take his hand. And yet she didn't want to do nothing... She ended up compromising by sending vaguely comforting vibes down the psi-link. She was rewarded by a half-smile.

"Is that why you didn't want her to come with us tonight? There certainly was room for her..." Domino angled the car into one of the EZ-Pass lanes. 

"It was my fault," Cable began after a long silence. 

"That she died? Which time?" Domino asked, mentally frowning. She was not about to let him start one of his epic bouts of survivor's guilt. Not after the day they'd had. He'd be up pacing until morning and she'd never be able to sleep with his agitation buzzing in her head.

"Both," he laughed mirthlessly, the edge of hysteria returning. "I got her killed both times."

"Did you throw her in front of a bullet meant for you?" Domino didn't bother to hide the sarcasm. 

"No. We went on a raid together. It was just the two of us. We made a body-slide into a Canaanite mech-lab in Lavaar to grab what we could and destroy the rest. She was going to set the charges because I had to carry the toys we were taking. I slid out, she was going to 'port out."

"But," Domino prompted as she exited the West Side Highway. 

"But the room was psi-dampened. I could body-slide because it's basically technology. But she couldn't teleport."

"And then boom," Domino finished. "Did you know about the psi-dampening?"

"No."

"So how was it your fault?" She waited for Nathan to play garage-door opener with his telekinesis. 

"I had insisted that she come with me, even after we had been angry with each other the entire time we were fighting over the city. She wanted to go back to Ebonshire and work on whatever they were doing, but I bullied her into taking one last mission before she left. Had anyone else been in her shoes, I would have had to wait for them and we would have slid out without a problem. We might still have had we not been angry..."

"You do realize that this was just an unfortunate accident, don't you," Domino asked rhetorically as she parked, not giving him time to protest. "There are such things as no-fault accidents."

"There was a lot more in play. I found out later."

They said nothing more as they went into the residence part of the safehouse. 

Once inside, they followed a routine that was eerily familiar despite its being out of practice. He took out a shirt and a pair of shorts with a drawstring for her to sleep in. She dug out the tube of gel-type toothpaste that she knew he thought was too sweet but kept around anyway. He took advantage of her penchant for wandering while she brushed her teeth and used the toilet. She waited for him to find the floss before returning to spit and rinse. They accidentally caught eyes in the bathroom mirror, Domino ruining any sort of moment by sticking out her tongue. 

They knew they'd be sharing a bed, had done it enough times without expectations to avoid any nervousness. They got under the covers and he turned off the light. And he just lay there, eyes staring unseeing at the ceiling.

Domino figured she'd give him a few minutes before calling him on it. Let him sulk for a fiver before expressing her irritation. It wasn't that she didn't understand how he felt about seeing Mirrin, just that, well, for a guy who was so intent on changing the future, he spent an awful lot of time wallowing in the past. 

"Okay, Nate, out with it," she sighed. 

"Go to sleep, Dom." 

It was a voice that brooked no argument, one that had sent both mercenaries and mercurial X-Force members scurrying. But Domino persisted. 

"I'd like to, but that isn't happening for either of us until you get whatever is sticking in your craw out."

"I can block the link." A threat rather than an offer. 

"You get restless when you're upset. It wouldn't matter. Just talk to me, Nate, please?"

Silence. But just before Domino was about to reach over and poke him, he spoke.

"Mirrin didn't die in the mech-lab."

"So I figured," Domino replied, shifting around in the darkness to face his voice. "She had to be around to die the second time." 

A pause. "Remember this afternoon, when we were talking about how the Canaanites used the forms of women and children as decoys and Trojan horses?"

"Mirrin shot a few of them and everyone freaked, right?"

Another silence. "They used Mirrin."

"What, as a plant?" Domino sat up, her night vision having adjusted well enough so that she could see that she was almost eye-level with Nathan. As eye-level as she could get considering the height difference. 

"To help us call their bluff," Nathan confirmed. "Except, for once, they weren't bluffing. They knew we knew about their methods."

"The Canaanites?" She could see him nod. 

"They knew we knew they didn't take hostages," he sighed. "They knew we wouldn't try to rescue Mirrin because we thought what we were seeing was a cyborg or a clone." Again, the soulless laugh. "They'd parade her in front of us every once in a while, chained and wearing inhibitor bands." 

"You ever get close enough to see for sure that it was her?"

"If they had cloned her, we wouldn't have been able to tell anyway. But we never got that close. We tried, the first few times, just in case. But she was psi-blocked and I couldn't even read her signature," he said, sounding helpless. "I was such a weak telepath then. Relying on Aliya or Mirrin to do the hard stuff... And when the time came, I couldn't do it on my own."

The self-loathing flowed like bile down their psi-link and Domino held her breath as it flowed over her and away. "How long did they keep her before killing her?"

A bitter snort. "Ten years."

"_Ten years_? That's an awful long time to play the same joke on someone."

"General Haight is easily amused," he replied. "They... did things to her. She was a plaything. Mirrin wasn't really a soldier for the Clan Chosen. She was a spy of sorts, for us and for the Askani. Getting information and sabotaging things. She was very, very good at that."

"So she had a lot of enemies."

"As far as the Canaanites were concerned, it was even better than if they had gotten Aliya. And when they finally got tired of Min, they threw her back to us. In pieces."

"But not before making sure you knew what was happening."

"They made sure we watched."

Domino shifted on the bed so that she leaned against his torso. She was sure she didn't have the words to make things any easier, but even a little warmth, just body heat...

"Right before they killed her," Nathan went on, surprising Domino by pulling her a little closer. "They took off the psi-blocker so that I'd know it was really her. She said not to worry, that I'd see her again."

"That would be now."

"That would be now," Nathan agreed. "She had already come back to this time, obviously. I didn't think about what it might mean then... And then they killed her."

A silence fell. 

"Does she know what will... what has happened to her?"

"Oath, I hope not." He shook his head slowly, his chin against her forehead. "I suspect she knows she doesn't die in her bed surrounded by grandchildren, but what she does know..."

"She seems normal enough. Not burdened down by the past and the future..."

"Like I am?" Cable finished with an amused snort that sounded so happily normal that Domino almost breathed a sigh of relief. "Min's always been too well-adjusted for her own good. She adopted 'what is, is' as her personal motto, I think."

"She _is_ Askani, Nate. Isn't that what you're all supposed to do?"

Neither of them said anything, the silence stretching on until Domino was wondering if Nathan had finally fallen asleep. The fingers which had at some point started stroking her hair had stilled. 

"What Tolliver... Tyler did to you... it was supposed to remind me of Mirrin," he said in a hoarse whisper. "It was supposed to be a kind of calling card. Take someone I care about, use them without me realizing it, and then rub it in my face. Payback for what they convinced Tyler that I had done to him. It was how I got Min killed. And it was how I nearly got you killed."

"Nearly being the operative word here, Nate," Domino said, sitting up a little and reaching out to tilt his face towards her. "Tyler didn't kill me, although there were distinct moments when I wish he had. And you found me. It doesn't make it any better for Mirrin, and I really wish it did, but I'm glad as hell that you made the most of your second chance."

He put his arms around her again and she leaned back against him, loose arm stretching around to touch his techno-organic side. And they just sat there until they both fell asleep. 

* * *

http://www.geocities.com/nikimarzione/ 


	9. Future Pluperfect 9: Idle Hands and Devi...

Future Pluperfect: Chapter 9 

* * *

  
  


"Everyone make it back in one piece?" Cyclops asked the video-phone screen before even sitting down. No sooner had the ramp extended from the Blackbird than Cannonball had told him that there was a transmission from Scotland and did he want to take it. 

"Ja, nothing worse than a few bruises and some shredded uniforms," Nightcrawler confirmed from the other side of the connection. He looked tired-but-relaxed; the endorphins having been washed away with all of the grime accrued on a mission. "We kept the civilian casualties low, considering we got there after it started. The townsmen were well enough to chase us away after we were finished..."

"They're Frenchmen," Scott replied with a snort and a shrug. He knew Kurt really didn't expect any better treatment on that side of the Atlantic than they got here. "Mutants and Brits, their two favorites segments of the population."

"Brian took a few vegetables to the back," Kurt added, fighting off a grin as he tried to be deadpan about it. "If they really didn't want Captain Britain saving their derrières... Meggan was more put out than Brian was, however. Thankfully Piotr was standing close by..."

A wet washcloth floated into Scott's peripheral vision and when he turned to thank his wife for sending it, he was promptly hit in the face with a dry towel thrown by Bobby. He made faces at them both, ignored Kurt's delighted cackle behind him, and turned around to face the screen again. 

"Speaking of, did Piotr's experience prove useful?" he asked as he wiped down his face with the washcloth. 

Colossus had returned to Excalibur two days ago and probably wasn't even over his jet lag before the Harvesters had attacked a village in the lower Loire valley. Not that exhaustion would stop Piotr, even on a bad day.

"Quite. Lockheed roasted many of them by himself, although Wisdom _had_ to see for himself that his hotknives were only going to defeat the purpose," Kurt sighed heavily. "Kitty had to phase him out of trouble... I've never really considered how many of our powers are energy-based before now. It is somewhat disconcerting to find almost all of your established strategies are no longer viable. More a problem for you than us, however."

"Tell me about it," Scott sighed in agreement. "I still have the bruises from where I nearly became lunch in Belize. He rubbed at his upper arm. He had a few new ones too, courtesy of this morning's foray. "But we've been lucky so far. Bruised egos mostly. I don't know what we're going to do if we don't stop this before it gets too big."

"Have you considered seeking the help of some more... traditional soldiers?"

"I don't know who I could ask, Kurt," Scott replied honestly. "It's not like it's just in the States, so even if I could just call up the Joint Chiefs of Staff and let them know that an almost unstoppable army has arrived from the future and will slaughter thousands in their quest to kill my son..."

"Ich verstehen," Nightcrawler agreed as he reached out to wipe a spot off of the video-phone screen. "The UN, perhaps... We're missing a lot of pieces, Scott. The villages we've found have all been relatively close to some sort of population center. But if your reports are correct," and here he waved the printouts that had been spewing forth from the printer all week long, his tail pointing at another pile, "then this Kurioon has been feeding in places we don't know about yet. They've found the energy to produce these 'Colorless' soldiers that weren't there before. From what Piotr said, those soldiers were no toys. But where are they getting this energy from?"

Scott leaned back in his seat and ran fingers through hair. "I don't know. We've wondered that as well. I can't imagine how many tiny villages in whatever corners of the world are lying empty right now. I don't know of any way to find out and we certainly don't have the manpower to run a global census. Joseph went off in a huff yesterday to Guatemala or thereabouts, determined to find out on his own... At least Rogue didn't go with him."

Kurt chortled. "Do Cable and..."

"Mirrin."

"...Mirrin have any suggestions? Do they only need human energy sources, or could they feed on a regular power source like a nuclear plant or hydraulic power..."

"We'd probably know if any reactors were under siege. Mirrin doesn't know what the Kurioon could use for energy - she says that they're only really used in areas where there aren't any other sorts of power, so she's never seen them use anything other than human sources." He shuddered in revulsion. That had been an unpleasant conversation. 

"And Cable is keeping his own counsel," Kurt prompted carefully. 

"He's not hiding anything," Scott replied, not bothering to be defensive about it.   
"More he's just content to let Mirrin answer all of our dumb questions while he does his own research. He's been remarkably forthcoming, considering his usual behavior, so I'm not complaining."

"Take heart in small victories, ja?" 

"Yeah. Although I don't think I ever envisioned my son following my footsteps in the business..." With both Alex and Nathan around, Scott had had more than enough cause to lament the course his family's history had taken over the past decade or so and while he hadn't gotten so maudlin as to prompt Jean to snap at him, it was weighing on him more than it usually did. 

"At least you didn't draft him like Magneto did his own..."

"You're right," Scott laughed a little deliriously. Trust Kurt to find the bright spot in anything. "That means I'm down to 999,999 things I've done wrong as a father... Sorry. It's been a long day. We just got back from Madripoor." He picked ineffectually at the sleeve of his uniform. The one that wasn't slightly tattered.

"So I see... Pardon for a moment," Kurt replied, then turned and fiddled with the volume on the intercom. The faint strains of what was obviously Moira's voice could be heard in the distance. "Ja, ja, I'll tell him," Kurt responded to the doctor. "Moira asks that Hank please call her at his earliest convenience."

"That's not what she said," Scott pointed out with a snort of laughter. 

"No, but it would be impolite for me to report that the chieftain of Clan Kinross warns that if McCoy doesn't get his big blue bottom over to a video-phone within the next twenty-four hours, she's got a battle axe and knows how to use it."

"Ever the diplomat, Kurt, ever the diplomat."

A flourish of hand and tail served as a response. 

"Listen, this vid-phone may not be equipped with olfactory sensors, but I can assure you that I'm starting to offend myself here. Let me go debrief with the other stinky ones and I'll let you know if we have anything interesting to report... And I'll pass on Moira's message."

"Bis zu spater, then," Nightcrawler replied, nodding farewell. 

On his way to the War Room, Cyclops tried to come up with something relevant out of the fact that the most effective ways of dealing with the Kurioon had thus far been extreme heat and extreme cold. In Madripoor, Bobby had frosted over the heads of the robot soldiers, knocking out their heat sensors enough to make the X-Men's disadvantage that much less overwhelming. But on the whole, the X-Men were barely holding their own against small groups of troops. Heaven only knows what would happen if the numbers got larger. 

***

#_Min?_#

Mirrin woke up with a start. She had been at the Xavier mansion for a week and yet she still awoke each day to a moment of unease about her location. Sunlight streamed through the window. #_Yes, Redd?_#

#_I just wanted to warn you that..._#

There was a loud banging on her door. The kind that sounded suspiciously like techno-organic material on wood. 

Repeating some of the Clan Chosen's most colorful invective - and Tetherblood could get very creative when in battle - Mirrin rolled out of the bed and reached for the sweats she had taken to wearing when not dressed for battle. 

Without yet resorting to telepathic pushes, Mirrin had so far successfully spurned everyone's efforts to get her into the Shi'ar fabricator to find clothing that fit her perfectly. Understanding the simple generosity behind it, Mirrin still had gently refused even as she hadn't quite gotten around to confessing the reasons behind her decision. Instead, she had accrued a small cache of new underclothes and borrowed sweats that she wore whenever battle costumes were not required.

"Is this not the women's wing, Nathan?" she asked as her clansman opened the door. She spoke in English, still trying to get used to the way the words rolled off her tongue. Picking up understanding of it had been easy - Redd spoke a much more standard version of the language than Gambit had - but speaking it was a different matter. It was a sticky language, Mirrin had decided, and it was no wonder than it had become obsolete centuries before she had been born. Mother Askani's native tongue or not. 

"Nothing I haven't seen before," he replied casually, crossing the room and standing before her. "Why don't you let them make you something a little less cumbersome to wear?"

"I like these. They're made from plants."

Nathan snorted, appreciating the comment even as he found it funny. Nothing in the thirty-eighth century was made out of natural fibers and he, too, had been embarrassingly awed by the softness and versatility of cotton cloth. Even the animal-hair fibers were softer here - wool was used as an abrasive in the time they had both left. 

"I know you've been cold since you got here, but they can make you something that will fit a little more snugly." He picked at the shoulder of the sweatshirt, frowning in recognition.

"How would you know if I was cold?" She looked up at him sharply. She was a stronger telepath than he was, she'd have known if he was in her head. 

"It took me years in this time before I warmed up," he explained with a snort. "And I didn't arrive in Antarctica. Although Scotland in winter was bad enough. They have warm clothes that are more flattering here, you know..." 

"You want to dress me up like..." Mirrin trailed off, making a face and gesturing vaguely.

Nathan laughed heartily, knowing exactly whom she was referring to. "Since when were you such a prude, Min?"

Not wanting to go into any reasons, she tried for a change in subject. "What are you doing here, anyway?" 

Nathan and Domino had spent very little time at the mansion, returning to his safe house after the two recent battles against the Kurioon and even taking part in some of the strategy sessions via teleconferencing. Cable's general loathing of anything that could be construed as bonding with the X-Men had been explained to Mirrin, but she also suspected that Nathan was fighting extreme discomfort at her presence. 

"There are some things I need to discuss with Scott. He's easier to convince face-to-face," he explained vaguely, looking out the window.

"You mean he's a lot harder to intimidate over a vid-phone." 

"Same thing."

Mirrin sat down to put on socks. "Was it odd to see Redd and Slym again? As they really are, not as we knew them?" It was certainly disconcerting for her to dimly recognize in Scott and Jean the pair whom she had thought of, for a brief period, as a second set of parents. But these actually _were_ Nathan's parents. 

Nathan paused to consider the question and turned around to answer. "I didn't think much about it. When I arrived here-and-now, I was too focused on my mission to deal with anything as inessential as emotional ties," he laughed bitterly, knowing that no battle is fought on auto-pilot and still amazed that he had tried so long to deny it. "And by the time I was ready to deal with it, with them, especially after we got the whole clone thing straightened out, there was too much new history between us."

"You hated each other?"

"I don't know if Jean and Scott can hate," he replied.

"You hated them, then."

"I didn't respect them. And I don't think they felt any differently towards me. I was forgiven a lot once they realized who I was - even now, they accept explanations from me that they'd never take from anyone else. Once in a while that bothers me - don't start talking about guilt, Min - but the rest of the time, I know I'm doing what I do for their own good."

"You just wish they'd appreciate you more for that, hmm?" Min fought back a laugh as she stood up and moved towards the door. It was good to see that Nathan had regained his innate belief that he knew what was best for everyone. That maddening aspect of his personality had disappeared for a long time after Aliya died and Tyler... reappeared. And, surprisingly enough, it had been missed. 

Nathan shrugged as he followed behind. "After all we lived through in our own time, to come back here and watch them try to fight for survival without actually _harming_ anyone..."

"It's strange," Mirrin agreed. "But it's a different battle here. There are still shades of gray here-and-now. They can afford to be... merciful."

"_They _can, but how much do they affect the future - our own time - through being soft?"

The two went down the stairs slowly, avoiding stepping on the books that someone had left on the bottom of the landing.

"History, Nat'an, says that there's very little anyone could have done to prevent the ascension of the Tomorrow Walker."

"But that's history as it was," he contradicted. "When they fought in ignorance of the stakes."

"And now that they know the prize, now that _you_ have told them, they still haven't changed and that bothers you."

"Wouldn't it you?"

Mirrin laughed knowingly at Nathan's arrogance. "'The wisdom of experience cannot be taught.'"

"Skip the proverbs, Min," he groused as they walked into the kitchen. Domino was sitting with Sam at the table while Jean and Ororo were puttering around. "Coffee?"

"Good morning," Mirrin greeted everyone, watching with amusement as Sam tried to decide whether or not he needed to stand up in her presence. Domino must have kicked him in the shins, however, as he suddenly lost the poised-to-rise pose and sat down heavily. 

"Eat your Cheerios, Sam," Domino ordered. 

"There's fresh fruit in the bowl, Min," Jean told her, pointing towards the island by the refrigerator. "It has to be washed, though."

Much to Bobby Drake and Hank McCoy's dismay, Mirrin had proven no fan of marshmallows, Twinkies, or sugared cereals. She had explained to them that having grown up in a time when the earth was simply too polluted to grow much in the way of edible produce, synthetic foodstuffs were neither a novelty nor a treat. Jean had been most accommodating and new varieties of fruits and vegetables appeared daily. Alex, however, only made her envious by describing the sorts of things that grew in Hawaii. 

This morning, however, Alex wasn't around and Mirrin was halfway done with her toast and pear and Nathan was on his second cup of coffee when commotion from the hallway that housed the door to the underground complex attracted everyone's attention.

"...And that's because I'm _not_ a super-hero, Scott," Alex was yelling behind him. "I'm in _great_ shape for a normal human being. Dare I say I'm even in _enviable_ shape for a normal human being." It was not Alex but Havok who appeared in view, dressed in his costume and face flushed from both exertion and anger, sweat slicking his blond hair against his forehead. He marched into the kitchen, roughly wiping his face with a towel and ignoring everyone's eyes upon him. 

"So, I guess this means the Danger Room is free," Nathan mused aloud casually, ignoring Jean's pointed look.

"When the hell did you manage to convince yourself that you were normal," Cyclops' angry words followed after Havok into the kitchen, the man himself two beats later. "Alex, you're in danger right now. And we can protect you as best we're able, but you of all people should know that there's a really good chance you'll have to fend for yourself at one point. This isn't a game. You just can't raise your hand and say that you're not playing any more."

"I'm the weak link, brother mine, I always have been," Alex snarled, spinning around to face his brother. "And pounding me into obedience in the Danger Room isn't going to change that. I know this 'family' and its mafia tendencies."

"Oh, cut the self-pity crap, Alex," Scott sighed heavily, anger still in his voice but fading fast. "You've led teams. You've died a few times. Your lover's been co-opted by the forces of evil. That makes you a perfectly average member of the Summers family. Accept it and move on."

Simultaneously, Domino and Jean made murmurs of objection, but Cable laughed and Sam coughed as he swallowed a grape whole. 

"Dad never had the possession problem," Alex said quietly after a long pause spent watching Sam deal with his grape. 

Scott recognized it for the tacit truce offer it was and shrugged. "With Hepzibah, who knows?"

"Actually," Ororo said, "He did, but as he was similarly possessed at the time, I am not sure whether you would like to count it..." She kept a straight face while she spoke and were it not for the fact that most in the room had known her too long, there would be no way to realize that she was making light of the situation. 

"You were in Genosha at the time, I think," Jean added for Alex's benefit. "Scott and I were still with X-Factor... it was right after Gambit joined the team."

"Dat things went t'hell in a handbasket, or are we talkin' 'bout something else?" the man in question wandered in. 

"Skrulls," Scott elaborated. "Or was that a different time?"

Remy shrugged indifferently as he headed for the fridge. "Who can keep track?" 

"You people have the strangest way of trying to make me feel like part of the group," Alex sighed as he pushed himself off of the counter he was leaning against. He bowed towards the table where Mirrin, Domino, Sam, and Jean were sitting. "Apologies for the temper tantrum. I'm going to shower."

A little later, things had settled back to silence. Cable and Cyclops were arguing in the War Room, Ororo had gone in search of the newspaper, Remy had found a comfortable perch on an empty space of counter, and Sam had finally gotten up to get Domino an apple after getting tired of her reaching over and picking the blueberries out of his fruit salad. 

"Do you want to join them," Jean asked Mirrin, indicating the direction Summers père and fils had traveled. 

"Not especially," Mirrin replied, dabbing delicately at her mouth with her napkin. "I've never been good at battle strategy and I certainly am unfamiliar with the terrain. I would just be in the way, else a pawn for one to use against the other." She turned to Domino, "But Nathan seems to respect your war instincts..."

"In practice, not in theory," Domino said and took a bite of apple. "The secret to my success is to let Nate think I'm going to do what he tells me to do until I'm too far away to hear him bitch that I'm not."

"It's not such a big secret," Sam corrected gently. "None of us ever had the guts ta try it ourselves, though. Cable'd never put you through a no-powers solo training session as punishment."

"Perqs of sleeping with the boss," Domino replied primly, causing Sam to blush furiously and Jean to hide a smile. Like father, like son. "Don't tell me you never let Tabitha off the hook..." Domino continued.

"Ah wasn't exactly _in charge_ of X-Force," Sam demurred, shaking his head as he focused intently on spearing a piece of pineapple, clearly unhappy with the direction the conversation had taken. "'Sides, Ah don't scare anybody, not 'nough ta try enforcin' the rules at any rate. Ah was more the head lunatic in the asylum. Lettin' everyone think they had a say was the only way Ah was gonna get anyone to listen ta me."

"I knew there was a devious side under that sunshine exterior," Domino said approvingly. "So, Mirrin, what are they arguing about?"

Mirrin looked startled and slightly embarrassed for having been caught telepathically eavesdropping. "Weapons training. There seems to be a difference of opinion as to the proficiency of this unit with respect to munitions... Something about broad sides of barns?"

"The gang dat couldn't shoot straight," Remy clarified from his spot on the counter. "Wolverine calls us that all the time." He leaned over to pull the style section out of the newspaper Ororo had gone off for and come back with. "We're not as bad as he t'inks, least not some of us."

"The use of conventional weapons is a long standing debate among the X-Men," Ororo explained to Mirrin as she sat on one of the stools by the island. "We are fighting for peace and co-existence, but there has been occasion when the emphasis has been on fighting, not peace. We are sworn to preserve life, yet that oath must also include ourselves. Our various life experiences have made it inevitable that we disagree on the point that separates the best defense and a good offense."

"Most of us have honed our powers so that they are our first defenses," Jean continued, tracing the rim of her coffee cup with a delicate fingertip. "But there are some cases when they are not - or cannot - be sufficient," and here she nodded towards Domino and Sam. "There have been enough incidents where powers have been inhibited that everyone accepts that we need to be proficient in the more... traditional elements of self-defense, but it isn't easy to be a high-profile advocate for peaceful co-existence if you're running military-style training drills."

"Public perception is not a factor in my own time," Mirrin observed. "Of course, almost all fighting is done in what you call 'traditional' fashion. Powers are to ameliorate, they are not a substitute for battle readiness."

"That's X-Force in a nutshell," Sam agreed. "Cable used ta yell that at us all the time." Of course, it sounded much nicer to hear it in Mirrin's calm voice than in Cable's training-room roar.

"That is why he is clan leader," Mirrin replied, then smiled. "At least in my time."

Jean rubbed her temple and winced. Scott was usually quite considerate about what he asked his wife to bear as part of their psychic rapport. But when it came to arguing with Nathan, Jean was often asked to siphon off some of his frustration. "Domino, I'm giving them five more minutes before I ask you to go down there brandishing something dangerous." 

"Why five," Domino asked, the same tension evident on her face for a split-second. "I forgot this part of the psi-link. Apparently, so has Nate." With each day together, the mental blocks both of them had placed on the link that joined them were loosened a little more. Sometimes it was nice. Sometimes it was unpleasant. And the knowledge that Cyclops was irritating his wife to a similar extent was not enough to make up for the increasingly less dull ache in the back of her head. 

"Nathan has always been generous with sharing his frustration," Mirrin commented as she watched the two women with frank amusement. "It is the moments of joy that have to be pulled out of him with aid of sharp implements."

"And to think he was such a happy baby," Jean sighed, more because the two men had finally shut up for a moment than out of guilt. "I suppose it's Scott and my fault, though."

"No, it isn't," Mirrin corrected quietly, thinking of an otherwise beautiful afternoon turned dark with the smoke of burning rubble and roasted flesh. "It is Stryfe's work. The boy you raised could light up a room with his laughter."

Domino felt a pang of pain somewhere inside and had she thought to look around, she might have seen a similar effect on the others in the room. 

"I don't think I have ever heard Cable laugh," Ororo said thoughtfully. "Rather, I have never heard him laugh other than in derision. Never in joy."

"I have," Domino said before she realized that she had opened her mouth. And she had. But only a few times. It was loud laugh, deep, and almost perfectly clear of the pain that colored every word Nathan spoke. The best part was that it came accompanied with a smile that actually went up to his eyes, one glowing bright gold and the other a shining blue, a smile that would make Domino wonder for a split-second what the man might have been had he not had to be who he was. Nate's laugh was like the Liberty Bell, she had once decided - once upon a time it rang out freely, but now it was cracked, permanently broken, and even if it did sound, it was never the same again. 

"Uh-oh," a voice from the doorway warned. "Hank, I think we've stumbled across an X-Men Angst Moment. Our mission might be more complicated than originally planned."

"Get in here, Bobby," Jean mock-snarled, shaking her head to clear the sad thoughts. "But what are you planning?"

"Eggos. Chocolate chip Eggos," Bobby announced cheerfully as he crossed the threshold, Hank McCoy following behind. Spotting Remy, however, his face fell in mock dismay. "But the whole point was to get at them when no one would be around to criticize."

"Told you, Drake, you want ta eat fake food, I ain't gonna stop you," Remy replied laconically. Considering Drake's newfound closeness with Rogue, especially after Seattle, Remy hadn't expected Bobby to treat him with anything short of disdain or perhaps even anger. But Bobby was his own man and the two had rather quickly returned to their bantering routine. "Not everyone can be taught good taste, neh?"

From behind the Op-Ed page, Ororo could be seen trying to suppress a grin. 

"As unindicted co-conspirator, I happen to consider myself quite the gourmand," Hank sniffed. "Even Cordon Bleu chefs occasionally eat French fries."

"They just call them 'pommes frites' so they can keep their noses in the air," Bobby added, waving the box he had retrieved from the freezer towards Gambit. "Not to mention that it's a wonder you can taste anything at all with all the nicotine and tar you inhale."

Gambit's eyes narrowed even as he smiled. "Va ta fai..."

"Language, boys, language," McCoy cleared his throat loudly. "We have ladies present."

"As if any of the ladies present have neither heard nor uttered an uncouth word," Alex contradicted dryly as he entered the room, dressed in civilian clothes and his hair damp from his shower. "Even Ororo got pretty creative in Australia."

"You speak unfairly of our guest," Bobby protested, indicating Mirrin. Of course, she barely spoke unless spoken to...

"I believe our fair Askani could outdo everyone present, if her conversations with Nathan are any indication," Alex replied, smiling at the woman as he sat down next to Domino so she'd know he meant her no ill will. "She just does so in another language."

"I had a very good teacher," Mirrin said, shrugging artlessly. 

"Cable's got a potty mouth," Bobby sang out, then paused to look consideringly at Mirrin. "Another useful thing he taught you, right up there with bomb-making and how to fix plasma cannons. With all due respect, Jean, your step-son really shouldn't be left in charge of impressionable minors. I'm actually starting to feel sorry for X-Force instead of my usual disdainful loathing."

"Hey," Sam piped up, then thought better of it, lest someone get around to coming up with a list of his former team's dirty deeds. Especially those in which he had a part. Domino, he noticed, was keeping curiously silent.

"This once, Nathan's not to blame," Mirrin corrected. "Now should I start singing bawdy drinking songs..."

"Nate sings?" Domino arched an eyebrow. In especially good moods, Cable was known to hum, and (after eight hours of lessons from Grizz and Kane in a dinghy in the port of Tanjungpinang) he could whistle in tune, but singing? 

"Nathan and Tetherblood are, between the two of them, a walking library of off-color lyrical poetry," Mirrin confirmed. "They used to make our convoys most... entertaining. T still breaks out into song during battle, but usually when Nathan's not in earshot."

"Stryfe took away his singing voice?" Jean knew the answer before she asked the question. 

"Aliya hated it when the two of them would get going. After she died, there was no more singing. At least not when Nathan's around." Mirrin looked carefully at Domino, wondering if there was any discomfort behind the impassive expression. She knew Domino held a special place in Nathan's life - it had been the residue of the psi-link between them that had convinced Mirrin to find Domino and have her join Nate in the first place. But the woman was as much an enigma to Mirrin as Aliya had been an open book, and Mirrin did not like to meddle with enigmas. 

Domino waited for the conversation to pick back up around them before saying anything. 

"I've met her, you know," Domino spoke quietly, turning to Mirrin as McCoy and Remy distracted the others by getting into a mild tussle so that the latter would move from in front of the toaster. "I've been to your future."

Mirrin looked surprised. "I did not know. Either I was not there at the time, or it has yet to happen in my lifetime." She paused. "Was Nathan there as well?"

"He was. Twice, actually, if you count the younger self," Domino confirmed, questioning herself for saying anything in the first place. This was not something she wanted to get into. Not with anyone, certainly not with someone who had been a confidante of the late Aliya. Mirrin was one of the only people qualified to make a comparison between the two women in Cable's life and Domino didn't want to know how she matched up against a devoted martyr to the Clan Chosen's cause. "Nate never got around to explaining to me how he could be in the same time as himself."

"Temporal physics." Mirrin waved her hand vaguely, accepting the change in topic for what it was. "The timestream is in constant motion, so you can never truly return to the same time-and-place as you once occupied. It's not a fascinating explanation, but it's enough to throw fear into amateur time walkers." 

"Time walkers? Such as yourself?" Alex had turned half of his attention to the women when he had overheard 'physics', but a non-theoretical conversation about time travel was of infinitely more interest than what he presumed was the latest rerun in the Remy and Bobby Cuisine Debate and he swung around physically to face them. 

"I am no amateur, Alex," Mirrin corrected, her accent making his name sound infinitely more exotic than it was. "Although a leap of two millennia is admittedly uncharted territory for me, I have made prodigious use of my gifts."

"Just don't ask her when the flonq she's been," a deep voice said from behind Domino. Cable rested his hands on her seat back, taking care not to pull any stray hairs. He had been drawn upstairs by a maelstrom of emotions on the link, although Jean's telepathic warning for him and Scott to cease and desist before she came down and went cosmic avatar upside their heads probably had something to do with it as well. Domino was shutting him out now, though. 

"Is time-travel inherent within you, or was it something that you acquired?" Hank asked from nearby. He had bodily removed Remy from the toaster area and was now awaiting his prize. "I still haven't quite figured out how your teleportation works, admittedly, but I am curious. We haven't really run across any 'time walkers' as you called them. Yet you sound as though they are common in your time."

"It's an Askani thing," Cable answered. "They can all time walk, although Mirrin's ability to teleport allows her to do it in substance, not just in essence."

"As was the case with our other visitors," Jean added, frowning ruefully. "At least the Askani ones. That's one of the reasons we were suspicious..." 

"Although playin' all mysterious didn't help you none, either," Remy contributed from his new spot next to the sink. Alex saw that the Arcadian was charging whatever silverware was at hand, but chose not to say anything. Whoever picked them was probably deserving of whatever Remy chose to inflict.

"Back to the matter at hand," Hank spoke sternly, not wanting to lose out on any useful information by getting sidetracked into another round of the X-Men's second-favorite game, 'Who Apologizes Now?' "What are the limits to your temporal wanderings?"

Mirrin frowned, partly in thought, partly because she knew Nathan was dying for the answer. "It depends. To get here-and-now, I needed help. But I could take everyone in this room to last year without difficulty."

The conversation continued for a short while longer - Mirrin politely refused to get into the specifics involving her abilities - and Sam was already most of the way back to his room to change for his Danger Room session when he heard Bobby yelping about hot silverware. 

***

* * *

http://www.geocities.com/nikimarzione/ 


	10. FP 10: Exit Eden

Future Pluperfect: Chapter 10 

* * *

Telepathy wasn't necessary to sense the wave of surprise that shot around the War Room as Cyclops read off the list of the two teams for the mission. 

#_Jean, does Scott realize that he's put Rogue and Gambit on the same team?_# Betsy managed to look casually bored as she sent the thought. 

"...I realize that these are not our usual teams," Cyclops continued as if on cue, looking around the room. "But Cable feels, and I agree, that considering the power level of our opponent, an opponent we still don't know a lot about, we should be mindful of the talents of the group and split up accordingly. We didn't do so hot in the last two battles, so there's no reason not to change things." 

Scott snuck a look at his son, just to make sure that Cable wasn't laughing out loud. Nathan had been somewhat less diplomatic when suggesting (demanding) a reorganization of the blue and gold teams. "Split up the telepaths, split up the flyers, make sure you've got someone who can actually shoot a gun on each side, and flonq the personality conflicts. You've coddled them long enough," had been Cable's precise words. Plus or minus a few flonqs, of course. 

"You're letting me come along?" Alex asked from the far end of the table. He hadn't been on either of the teams for the two battles that had taken place since his arrival, instead being sentenced to double shifts in the Danger Room. It was an ignominy he hadn't suffered since his freshman year of high school, when he had been bounced down to the junior varsity football team. Nobody had said anything, but Alex was embarrassed. He had been battling Sentinels since before many in the room had figured out they were mutants, let alone that he was too old to be grounded by his brother. 

"Forge's first shipment of weapons arrived this morning," Scott began after smirking at his brother. He held up a large rifle. "It takes both plasma cartridges as well as bullets, so you can shoot whatever you need at whatever you come across. The cartridges are non-standard, so make sure you don't pick up any old ones from the armory."

The rest of the briefing was short. Using Mirrin's program, Cable had run though a list of possible hit points and their likely order of targeting. Relevant parts of the list had been forwarded to superheroes all over the globe - Alpha Flight was still non-plussed about Mirrin and Gambit's adventures in Quebec while Sunfire had been his usual charming self during their (not) brief (enough) conversation - and the Fantastic Four had volunteered to handle the bulk of the non-Kurioon involved mayhem. Excalibur was already on the case and the Avengers, Hank had reported, would be available if needed, although they were heavily involved in their own crisis for the time being. 

Storm's team was up first and had departed for Brazil in the Blackbird before Roberto Da Costa, X-Force's Sunspot and a native of the country, could contact the X-Men about joining the away team. Sam had been on monitor duty when he did ring in and failed to convince his friend that Cable would not appreciate him leaving his own team (currently en route to Alaska) to drop by because he wasn't sure the senior team could handle things. 

"It's your funeral, Berto," Sam sighed as the comm.-link was abruptly terminated. "Of course, then Tab'll be free ta date again..."

"That's the power of positive thinkin' for ya," Wolverine chuckled from the doorway. 

"Didn't realize you were back," Sam said as he turned around, knowing better than to try and tell Logan than he didn't mean what he said. Wolverine had stayed behind in Madripoor to check up on his personal interests there and hadn't been expected back for another few days. 

"Viper's back to collectin' her duties," the short man replied with an indifferent shrug. "Figgered that was a sign that things were back to normal. Not like anyone'd be able to tell what Lowtown looked like cleaned up, anyhow."

"Been meanin' to ask you," Sam began thoughtfully. "How come the Harvesters stayed out of Hightown?"

"Rich folk ain't necessarily good at anythin' other than spendin' money," Logan answered, rolling his shoulders as one popped loudly. "Thieves, murderers, the usual Lowtown crowd, that's the sorta people I'd want if I was pickin' up an army."

"Makes sense, Ah guess."

Logan nodded and pulled out a cigar. He didn't light it, aware of the smoke detector Storm had hidden in the room. "So, what did I miss?"

"Cable reorganized the teams to cover the list he cranked out, Cyclops is goin' along with it, and we're to be ready to head out ta Lebanon in... eight hours."

"Cable reorganized the teams?" A snort. Despite everything, Wolverine respected Cable's battle instincts. It was just when Scott and Jean's favorite tin soldier decided that everyone else was an accessory that things got complicated.

"Well, Cyclops is sayin' that it was 'a suggestion' and that he thinks it's a good idea and all," Sam explained with a knowing expression, his eyes glimmering with amusement. "But Ah think it's all Cable's idea and Cyclops is jus' sharing credit so that nobody raises a ruckus. The teams look a little X-Forcy."

Logan chuckled around his cigar. "And how's that?"

"You're glad they're watchin' your back, but you'd kill'em if you had to spend an hour's downtime together," Sam elaborated. "Cable's not as big on matchin' personalities as Cyclops is. He figures we'll stop bickerin' when they start shootin' at us."

Logan nodded in agreement, then sniffed. "Betts is in with Cerebro?"

"Ah think so. Mirrin's been meanin' to try it out, but Ah think she's off with Cyclops somewhere."

"That one doesn't need any boost/ I'm goin' to crash for a few. I'll see you in eight."

"Yes, sir."

"I told you not to call me that," Logan called over his shoulder.

"Yes, sir, you did."

Growling about the youth today, Logan wandered upstairs to his quarters. He made sure to let Cyclops know that he'd be tagging along come morning. 

***

"They come up for air yet?" Pete Wisdom didn't even break stride as he walked through the kitchen, sniffed the contents of the coffee pot, picked up his keys, and headed for the door. 

Brian Braddock and Kitty Pryde had spent the entire morning playing with the carcass of the Harvester they had brought back from France. Actually, Kitty had spent most of the previous week with the robot as well, leaving Wisdom to make crude remarks about mechanical replacements for services he could provide. Piotr had blanched and fled the room at one point in Wisdom's repartee, leaving Kitty with no choice but to chastise Wisdom for rubbing salt into wounds. She hadn't bought his somewhat-less-than-heartfelt apology. It _had_ been witty repartee, damned it.

"Nope," Meggan replied as she looked up from a nature magazine. "If you're going for a coffee, please bring back some fruit?"

"Since when did I become a bloody grocer," he asked somewhat rhetorically. Meggan knew he'd do it. Pryde had used very small words (and other teaching aids) in her explanation of why living with others meant doing for others. "What're ye reading?" Being polite was another trait Kitty was trying to foster. And he _liked_ the rewards he'd get for being polite. Were Pryde ever to come up from the tech lab. 

"They have a lovely pictorial on tigers," Meggan answered brightly as she waved at the magazine. Despite the fact that Brian had gotten her the subscription precisely because there were more pictures than words, she probably could have gone through the accompanying article, if pressed. It was not like the old days, when she'd leave pictogram notes on the "while you were out" pad. 

Wisdom grunted - he'd performed the minimum required social niceties and was free to go. 

He had not yet returned when Kitty and Brian finally did come upstairs from the tech lab. 

"Any luck?"

"That thing makes Widget look like something a three-year-old built with an Erector set," Kitty sighed as she sat down heavily at the table. "I wish I could get some info from Cable on some of the technology it uses..."

"I can try McCoy," Brian offered, leaning against the refrigerator. "They've had one of these toys for a while now."

"Hank's a brilliant geneticist," Kitty replied frowning, "but hardware is my thing. If I can't get anywhere, I doubt he'd have gotten any further."

"But he's bosom buddies with Cable's Mum and Pop," Brian replied with a crooked grin. "All we have to do is get him to get them to get their too-secretive son to cough up a few files."

"You're somewhat severely overestimating Nathan Christopher's sense of filial piety," Kurt Wagner retorted with a wry grin as he joined the group, sitting down at the table next to Kitty. 

"Can't hurt," Brian maintained. 

"Yes, yes it can," Kitty shook her head, remembering all too clearly. "I'm going off to see if Lockheed still remembers who I am and then I'm going to work out. I need to clear my head." 

After Kitty left, Brian sat down in the chair she had been occupying. "The robot's bloody impossible to figure out," he confided. "I've been playing with transistors since I was a tyke and I've never seen a transmitter that looks like that one's."

"Wasn't there something in those files we got from Westchester about the transmitter?" Kurt asked. It had been a while since he had looked over that material.

"They transmit a radio signal that a telepath can, with training, recognize," Piotr Rasputin confirmed as he came in through the kitchen door dressed in running clothes. "Mirrin was able to show Jean, but Elisabeth..."

"I don't think she likes Cable's friend very much. It's a Braddock thing - Betsy can be hard to teach when she's being stubborn," her twin brother replied blithely, eyes catching with Meggan's. The faerie's expression was one of eloquent understatement. 

"Anyway, if we could figure out a way to tap that radio connection," Brian continued. "We might have a heads-up. Presuming we could figure out how to convert that signal into something we could read..."

"Things would be so much easier if we had a resident telepath," Meggan mused, closing the magazine. "They've got four in Westchester now. 'Tis a bit gluttonous..."

"'Tis also a bit necessary," Nightcrawler replied. "Personality conflicts being what they are, Jean is probably the only one of the four who is on speaking terms with everyone."

"No family exists that is not occasionally plagued by conflict," Piotr replied mildly.

"Yes, but Xavier family conflict is made all the more fascinating by the potential for the use of deadly force at the dinner table," Brian cracked. 

"Family that fights together stays together," Pete Wisdom's voice piped up from outside the kitchen door. The man appeared a moment later. "Right, Petey?"

***

Eight hours, Sam had said. Eight hours should have still been early morning, but late enough so that there should have been plenty of light coming through Logan's window when the alarm sounded. There was only darkness, however.

"Apologies for forcing you to be greeted by the rosy fingers of dawn," Beast's voice sounded over the intercom. "But our guests have arrived early in Lebanon. Up and at them, boys and girls."

"Those ain't the rosy fingers I wanna be wakin' up to," Gambit could be heard grumbling on the way to the bathroom. 

"Beast's jus' quotin' Homer," Sam tried to point out, but the loud yawn took away from the impression of erudition, as did his tripping over the bottom of the doorjamb. "Magneto made us read him," he said as he cracked his jaw loudly. 

"Yawn like dat... Thought you were a farm boy, up wit' de roosters," Gambit teased as he pushed through from behind him. 

"Livin' here in civilization made me lazy," Sam yawned again for emphasis and shrugged. 

"Unless you wanna _buy_ the farm, get outta the way," Logan growled as he joined the two. 

Ten minutes later, the team was assembled in the hangar. Mirrin was still in the armory, but came out presently stuffing a bag of something into the pouch lashed to her left thigh. 

"Take this, Gambit," she ordered, tossing him an identical bag. 

"C-4?" The Cajun looked surprised, but dropped the plastic explosive into the pocket of his trench coat. 

"It is well-suited to your powers," she explained cursorily. The team had gotten used to Mirrin's utter lack of humor in battle situations and Remy wasn't put off by the brusque tone. "It'll do more damage than your cards." 

The flight would be a long one, so the briefing took place once cruising altitude had been reached. 

Sometime later, Cyclops walked back from the cockpit waving a notebook. "Mirrin, can you look at this please? It looks like Cable spent the return flight from Brazil scribbling notes, but I can't read them."

"Ah can read his handwritin', sir," Cannonball offered. It had taken much practice and Cable had not been amused when he had found Tabitha's Big Bad Boss Decoder Wheel, but Domino (actually, it had been Vanessa) had thought it funny enough to keep them from the extra training sessions assigned as punishment. The real Domino would've found it funny, too, though. Had Cable not incinerated it.

"It's not in English," Cyclops explained with a frown, turning the open page upside down. "At least I don't think it is."

Mirrin took the notebook and skimmed the first few lines. "If it eases your mind, Nathan's handwriting isn't very legible in Askani, either." She went back to her seat with the notebook, reading intently. 

"Why'd he write everythin' down in a language none of us knew?" Rogue asked aloud. 

"The notes are filled with references to battles in my own time," Mirrin explained without looking up. "Events I would need to interpret for you. My command of written English is fragmentary at best, so it is preferable that Nathan communicate with me in a language in which I am at least comfortably fluent."

"You can't read English?" Psylocke asked, surprised by her own curiosity. "But you speak it almost perfectly."

"All I have learned in this time is to speak a more... contemporary version of the Olde English the Askani spoke," Mirrin replied, putting her finger on the line of text she was reading and then looking up. "And as I spent very little time with them as it was, I had no need to learn something so unnecessary as its written form. In hindsight, I should have... acquired literacy from Gambit upon my arrival here-and-now, but we had other more pressing issues at the time."

"Yeah, like not freezin' t'death," Gambit muttered with a half-chuckle. He wasn't sure whether or not he actually found it funny. 

"Just as well, we're not too sure the Cajun can read," Wolverine grunted, trying to keep the mood from turning taciturn. There was no point in holding a guilt-fest on the way to a battle. Remy seemed to pick up on the thought and Wolverine extended a claw in warning when Gambit charged a card in (mock?) protest.

"Save it for the bad guys, boys," Rogue interrupted. 

"Mirrin, let me know when you're done reading," Cyclops said before he returned to the cockpit. Once he was back to the pilot's seat, he pulled up his mental shields and tried to remember recent history as Slym Dayspring had known it. 

Mirrin's story was getting more confusing by the detail. He and Jean had already privately discussed the... strangeness of seeing Mirrin so much younger than Nathan when it should really have been only a few years. It was not a big leap to realize that she had come back in time from an earlier point in time than Nathan had - especially considering Nathan's odd reaction to seeing her - but there were other confusing aspects. Like how Mirrin could spend any time among the Askani... Rachel had brought him and Jean forward in time years before Mirrin had been born and even as Nathan had indicated that the Askani were not destroyed during that cataclysmic battle, Mirrin's unit was from nowhere near Ebonshire - were she born today, she'd probably be Turkish - and the Dayspring Unit had met up with her clan only after years of traveling away from the Askani base. 

Jean had relayed Hank's concern that Mirrin might be working for something other than Nathan's best interest. But while there was nothing in the young woman's conduct that would lend substance to the accusation, Scott couldn't shake the nagging concern that he was overlooking something. A concern that Nathan's increasingly obvious attempts to avoid the mansion were not dismissing. 

A noise from the body of the plane took Scott out of his musings, but it was only Betsy dropping the plastic cup she had been drinking out of.

The rest of the team alternately dozed, wandered around the plane, or watched Mirrin scribble notes in the margins of Cable's notebook. It was a long flight even in the Blackbird and the hours passed slowly. 

Finally, after Cyclops had come back from the cockpit again, Mirrin spoke up. 

"The unit found in Brazil is of a similar type to the one some of us encountered in Madripoor," Mirrin began, looked down over the notes she had taken on the top page. "And that for some reason, the soldiers seem to be more affected by plasma weaponry than they are in our own time. Dayspring suspects the differing contents of the air may be a factor, but that is not important here... Out of the individuals kidnapped before the massacres began, how many telepaths were among their number?"

"One," Gambit answered. "Car bomb in Geneva. Why?"

Mirrin nodded. "He says that the soldiers encountered in Brazil seem a little too intelligent for low-level dog soldiers."

"Too intelligent how?" Cyclops asked cautiously. 

"Colorless shouldn't have reacted as they did against the battle tactic Dayspring used," Mirrin elaborated, tapping the notebook with her pencil. "They are cannon fodder. Well armed cannon fodder, but cannon fodder nonetheless. You have all seen them in action."

"And a few of us have the wounds to prove it," Psylocke retorted dryly. "If that's cannon fodder, I'd hate to see what the rest of the Kurioon color spectrum looks like."

"And may the Bright Lady assure that you never do," Mirrin spoke with such solemnity that Psylocke couldn't help but shiver. "Whoever was controlling the soldiers in Brazil should not have been able to try the counterattack used unless there was advance information."

"Did they telepathically picking up the battle plans?" 

"That is one of the two possibilities," Mirrin agreed. "The plan could have been taken from any of the group once it was imparted, not necessarily from its originator. Nathan would have known if someone was picking his brain, but a headblind person might not have." 

"And the other possibility?" Gambit really didn't want to know. He recognized Mirrin's expression, the one where she had two types of news: bad and worse.

"The other is that whoever is leading the Kurioon is familiar with the battle strategy of the Clan Chosen."

"Is that a reasonable possibility?" Cyclops asked. 

"It is. I do not know who I was sent back to chase," Mirrin allowed. "Or even from when they have come. If it were a Canaanite soldier, some sort of tactical preparation would be inevitable as they are not a careless group. If it one of the minion of Apocalypse, then our odds improve as the Tomorrow Walker's pets tend to share in their master's abundant self-confidence without sharing in his awesome power."

"All bark, no bite," Wolverine muttered. "But even a barking dog doesn't starve."

"Huh?" Rogue raised an eyebrow. 

"Stryfe, Tyler, and Sinsear, to name a few," Cannonball spoke up. "Just 'cause they're crazy doesn't mean they ain't dangerous."

"What does this mean for us now?" Cyclops asked. 

"Nothing really," Mirrin replied with a shrug. "Keep your mental shields tight, perhaps, but it is too soon to try and draw any conclusions. Neither option is especially... appealing, so if we are able to pass the events in Brazil off as mere coincidence, so much the better."

A half hour or so later, the group was strapped in for the descent into Lebanon. The landing was uneventful and the group stepped out into the early evening breezes of the Al Biqa valley. The Blackbird was effectively hidden by trees and crops. 

"Not what Ah expected at all," Rogue said as she looked around. "Somehow Ah thought we'd be landin' in the middle of 'Arabian Nights'."

"So beautiful now, but in two millennia it will be called the Saldiq and be dotted with charnel pits," Mirrin spoke under her breath, but loud enough for Wolverine to hear her sadness. 

The group began the march towards the market town a couple of kilometers down the road. 

"We're too late," Wolverine announced. "I can smell it."

"What do you sense?" Mirrin asked as the metal ribbons on her bracelets extended over her hands. The bracelets, it had been explained, were a variation on Nathan's psimitar, the ribbons were both for protection and improved aim. The effect, then, was that Mirrin was armed with a thought, the way Havok or Colossus might be. 

"Blood, motor oil, the locals were fried to death," he described as he inhaled deeply. To his over-sensitive nose, the air was sweet with cooked flesh. Plasma weapons tended to braise, but this was more of a broil... "High temperature, whatever it was. More powerful than anything we're carryin'."

"Want me to fly ahead, Cyke?" Rogue asked. 

"Take Cannonball with you and don't engage anyone," he replied. 

The rest of the group was close enough to smell the first scents of the carnage when the pair returned. 

"Not as many people as Slovenia," Cannonball reported with a shudder. "But just as gory. Rogue and Ah disobeyed orders, Sir. We shot the last of the Harvesters we saw."

"Nobody left, nothing to save," Rogue confirmed flatly. 

The rest of the march to the town was done in silence save for a few muttered curses in various languages. 

Once there, the rubble was still smoking as they passed through what had been the market square, bloody carcasses and unharmed wandering animals adding to the macabre feeling. The group stopped. 

"Let's take a look around," Cyclops half-sighed, his disappointment clearly echoed in his words. "Pick up anything interesting and we'll see if it won't help us do better next time."

"Unacceptable," Mirrin muttered to herself. "Not acceptable at all."

"What are _you_ going to do about it?" Psylocke asked, irritated. Even if she had been 'encouraged' to keep an open mind about the new arrival, the British telepath had just about had it with the Askani's attitude. It was like having Cable in stereo and one was bad enough.

"_We_ are going to fix this," Mirrin spoke evenly.

"How?" Gambit raised an eyebrow. 

"The same way we did in Quebec," she answered, looking around on the horizon. "I believe the expression here-and-now is 'to get a do-over'."

"We're gonna time-rip," Cannonball realized aloud. 

"More or less."

Cyclops stood silent for a long moment as the others murmured about the idea of time travel. Finally he cleared his throat. "We have time to work out a plan, then. I want to get as many details of our little reenactment down before we go back. Cannonball and Rogue, go airborne and trace the Kurioon's paths of ingress and egress. If we can't cut them down at the pass, we can at least thin them out before they hit town. Psylocke and Wolverine, see if you can't figure out whether the civilians had a chance to hide, and if so, where. Gambit, come with Mirrin and me. Between the three of us we should be able to find some defendable ground positions."

There were no protests as the group, still a little numb from the scenery, moved into action.

Cannonball let Rogue take off first and then blasted off close behind. "Ah can't see anything 'round the trees," Rogue groused. "We'd've had an easier time of it in the desert."

"Let's look away from the trees," Cannonball suggested. "These robots can't climb mountains, so maybe they don't like trees any better. They had to stick to the roads in most of the places we've found 'em."

"Well, there's one road into town and one out, and Ah think Wolverine woulda known if we'd been walking in their tracks," Rogue called back. "Let's try the other option."

The pair flew towards the gravel road that led in the opposite direction from the one they had arrived. 

"They probably came this way," Rogue called over as she crouched down upon landing. "The gravel's all even. No wheels, just a lot of feet."

Nearby, Cannonball nodded - Cumberland, Kentucky had enough dirt paths that he understood the significance of the gradient of the road. "Now we just gotta find out where they started from."

The pair took to the air once more, flying low to better pick up anything out of the ordinary. 

Back in the town, Psylocke and Wolverine wandered among the rubble. 

Most of the town had been involved in the ill-fated defense, judging by the locations of the corpses and the fact that nobody had been found in their beds, unlike in the Ukraine and other Kurioon ports of call. In the end, though, it hadn't mattered and Psylocke was disgusted by her own surging pessimism. 

"Did you find something?" She called over to her partner, who was sifting through the remains of a partially collapsed building across the way from the one she was surveying. 

Fertile valley or not, the sunset was bringing with it markedly cooler temperatures and Wolverine could feel more clearly the contrast between the air and the warmth of the bodies he stood over. Belatedly realizing that Psylocke had asked a question that required an answer, he grunted ambiguously. 

Psylocke flipped over the remains of a door, the noise of the wood falling back onto stone echoed in the quiet. To a telepath, the silence was doubly eerie; there was normally no such thing as calm on the astral plane. Even in rural areas, there was telepathic noise to be felt buzzing in the background. And for Betsy Braddock, lover of big cities and their night life, the fact that the only minds brushing up against her mental shields were the familiar psyches belonging to her teammates was as much disconcerting as the blood-spattered bricks she was currently standing on. Probably more, she thought to herself.

"Stay there," Wolverine finally called back. "I'm almost finished."

"What's there that you don't think I should see?" 

"This is where they tried to hide the kids," he answered back simply after he emerged from the rickety doorway a couple of yards away. He could hear the aggression in Psylocke's voice, but Betsy had apologized for getting 'snippy' enough times in Australia (and after) for him to recognize it as a sign of her inner disturbance and not any irritation with him. 

Still vividly remembering the Ukrainian girl, Psylocke nodded and turned back to the wreckage she had merely taken a glance at while waiting for Wolverine to re-appear. Something glinted in the light of her flashlight as she scanned the periphery of the destroyed building. Moving closer, she saw it was a knife, a kitchen knife. Kicking away the rubble near the handle, Psylocke saw a bloodied hand. Pushing more of the rubble away, the hand led to an arm, to a body. It was an old woman, her body badly broken and showing scars from where the Harvesters had done their job. Psylocke took a deep breath and stepped back. 

"I know I shouldn't feel anything," she spoke quietly, knowing Wolverine was close enough behind her that he would hear, "that if all goes according to plan, she'll never end up like this, nobody in this town will end up like this. If Mirrin can bring us back in time, they'll never even know what might have happened. 

"But what about everyone else? Why does this town get a do-over when nobody else did? What about that village in the Ukraine... or Belize, or Madripoor, or Chile, or Slovenia... Why not them?"

"Because no matter what we do to fight it, Betts, life's a bitch," Wolverine answered from right behind her. "No matter how big the guns or how good the time traveler, life's a bitch and she wins in the end. I did her dirty work for a while, I know. So does Wings."

"So why try, then?"

"There's a lotta people that don't," he replied conversationally, shrugging even as he gestured for them to move down the street. She followed and they looked through collapsed buildings and piles of rubble. "Their loss. The trick is to realize that it doesn't matter who wins in the end. It's the fight that counts. For that, and for that only, Apocalypse is probably right, even if he goes 'bout it the wrong way."

"It really is a game, then," Psylocke laughed bitterly. "Arcade, the Beyonder, the Phoenix Entity, even Roma... we're pawns after all."

"Not pawns, players. Pawns don't fight back," he growled as the claws came out with a Snikt! "And I always fight back. So do you."

Betsy Braddock, codename Psylocke, survivor of body-swapping, brain-washing, the onset of her telepathy and the loss of her eyes, the discovery of her otherworldly origins and the decimation of her family, could do nothing but nod. 

Meanwhile, at the other end of the village, Cyclops stood in front of one of the few undamaged buildings and called up. "Well?"

The wind had picked up as the sun had fallen and it now whistled through the rubble carrying the stench of death and carnage. Cyclops was doing his best to not to dwell on the way the he tended to focus on the sweet smell of cooked meat to distract him from the nauseating stink of blood, bile, and excrement. On some primitive level, he supposed it was a kind of coping mechanism. But it was still roasted human flesh, and the very thought that he was seeking that smell out - even if it was only to cover the too-strong odor of raw fecal matter - repulsed him. 

"Depends what you want to use dis for," Gambit's voice was heard before he leaned out the second story window. "It's no good for offense; the Harvesters never got this far. Defense... peut-être. It's sturdy, but dere ain't enough windows for look-outs."

"We can hide the young and infirm here," Mirrin suggested from where she was standing, off to the side and facing what was probably the remains of the village school. "We don't want them in the way. The further away from the epicenter, the better off they shall be."

"Pity we don't know what the rest of the town looks like when it's not flat," Gambit frowned as he exited the building and dusted off his shoulders. "There may be a better hidey-hole somewhere else." _Hide-and-seek. Used to play that with my brother, once upon a time. Except back then, loser had to sneak past Tante while she made dinner and make off with the cookie jar. This go-'round, loser has to end up fried like a side of pork at a Mardi Gras picnic._

"It's a chance we'll have to take," Cyclops agreed, frowning. "What are you looking at, Mirrin?"

"I don't think it's anything," the Askani replied, shaking her head and turning back towards the two men. "It looks like a charnel tally, but I can't imagine why one would be here."

"A tally? As in what Apocalypse..." Cyclops didn't need to finish the thought. 

"That's why I don't think it is that," Mirrin finished. 

"Nobody 'splain anything to me, dat's okay," Gambit said as he walked over to where Mirrin had crouched and ran a bare finger over the scratches on the wall. 

"In Mirrin and Cable's future, when Apocalypse's troops had... cleaned out a village, they would put up a sign with the date and number of casualties, sort of an "Apocalypse Was Here" kinda thing," Cyclops frowned. "It was meant both for administrative purposes - there were Censuses of the Dead - and as a warning for anyone else. The time it took to kill everyone in the village was also recorded for posterity."

"Well, don't have to worry 'bout that here," Gambit said, dusting off his knees as he stood up. "This is just some kid keeping track of marbles." He held out his hand, three tiny glass balls resting in the palm. After a moment, he pocketed them. No such thing as too much artillery and glass charged nicely. 

The three moved on until Mirrin stopped at a truck parked next to a wall. The pickup was dusty and dented, but otherwise intact. 

"Can you make this run?" She turned to Gambit.

"Hotwired m'first before I was big enough to see over the steering wheel," Gambit replied. Hopping into the cab, he disappeared under the dash. It was a moment before the motor was running quietly. 

"Leave it running and stand back," Mirrin told him. 

"What are you doing?" Cyclops asked as Gambit joined him in walking across the street.

"Testing a theory," she responded as ran over to them. Turning, she raised her rifle toward the car. A shot rang out, puncturing the driver's side door. More importantly, the engine stilled for a long beat, then continued again with a wheeze, and then stopped. 

"And the hypothesis was?" Gambit asked with raised eyebrow. It didn't matter that he had known Mirrin (the adult version, at least) longer than anyone other than Cable. Sometimes, he just couldn't imagine where she got some of her ideas. 

"In rifle mode," Mirrin began, holding up the gun, "It fires an electromagnetic pulse ahead of the bullet. I doubt that it is strong enough to permanently disable a cyborg, but it ought to provide some benefit."

"How'd you figure that out?" Cyclops looked over his own rifle. There were no markings that indicated that the gun fired anything other than bullets or plasma charges and if Forge had said anything about an electromagnetic pulse, Hank certainly hadn't passed the information on.

"The chamber that houses the bullets is too big for the size of the clip we're using," she replied with a casual shrug. "From what I have seen, Forge's inventions are remarkable for their efficiency. It stood to reason that there was something else. I just wanted to know what it was before I used it."

"Oh." Cyclops shook his head as the three moved on. "I wonder why Forge didn't say anything..."

***

http://www.geocities.com/nikimarzione/ 


	11. FP 11: Take Two, Take Back, Take Over

Future Pluperfect: Chapter 11 

* * *

As the last of the sun's rays peeked over the horizon, the group assembled. It had been a long afternoon in more ways than one. Death and destruction had long been a fact of life among the X-Men, but the sheer scale of innocent lives lost and the manner in which they were lost... the team was subdued. 

Mirrin pointed with one outstretched arm at the horizon, then traced the sun's path back towards its noon position, seemingly memorizing the route. 

"You sure you can do this?" Wolverine asked as he watched her. "Don't want you bringing us back a month or two. The sun's position..."

"...changes with the seasons," Mirrin finished with a smile that showed no irritation with being questioned about her abilities. "In my own time, I am from not far from here. I know where the sun will be. We need eight hours, correct?"

"Bodies've been cooling about six, so considerin' how fast the killing went, that'll give us time to get set," Wolverine agreed. He reached for Psylocke's hand, completing the chain. Mirrin needed contact to share her mutant ability, much in the same way as did Shadowcat and Nightcrawler. 

"Strengthen your mental shields," Mirrin warned. "The astral plane is quite noisy." With that, she closed her eyes and the air around the group shimmered.

A moment later, the warm sun was high above them. 

Because of the lateness of the hour and her need to see the sun on the horizon, Mirrin had had to teleport them back through time from a hill closer to the Blackbird than to the town and in the opposite direction from which the Kurioon detachment would be arriving. 

"All right, guys, remember what we're supposed to do," Cyclops cautioned. The plan, such as it was, had been formulated before they had jumped through time. It necessarily had to be loose, but certain elements were in place. "Stay in contact and be careful."

Rogue, Wolverine, and Psylocke made their way to the tall fruit trees to the far side of town. Rogue flew slightly ahead and Wolverine took up the rear, with Psylocke's ninja-trained silent footfalls in between. 

The plan was to split into two groups, one to do the bulk of the fighting against the Kurioon and the other to pick up the overflow while defending the town. And as much as Wolverine loathed hanging back as part of the second wave, he understood the practicality of it. The four who had stayed behind were the best marksmen of the group while he, Rogue, and Psylocke were best suited for close combat, should it get to that. And it would. Considering how unevenly the previous battles had gone, Wolverine had no doubt that he would be seeing more action than he would otherwise care to without going into berserker mode. 

"Ah think the spot me 'n' Cannonball found before is still gonna be the best one," Rogue called over her shoulder to the other two as she slowed her flight speed to barely enough to stay aloft. "There's a couple of buildings standing now, but all they do is block off the view from where the people are goin' to be. More cover for us, but only on the back flank."

"Well, that will make things easier," Psylocke mused aloud as she moved past some very tall trees that were obviously not meant to bear fruit. "I don't expect the locals will be that thrilled to see us blowing up their environs."

Once the trio reached their pre-determined hiding spot, Wolverine settled down on an old stump and lit a cigar. 

"Don't smoke that thing now," Psylocke exclaimed, waving her hand in disgust. Rogue just snorted.

"Why not? Who's gonna notice," Wolverine asked with a playful smile that really looked just cruel. "You're blockin' everyone, right?"

"I was going to wait until we needed to be blocked," Psylocke said, then sighed as she realized the trap had already closed around her. As if Australia hadn't taught her enough about Wolverine's penchant for blackmail. 

"Consider this practice," he said with a smile as he waved the cigar towards her. 

Back on the hill, Gambit, Cannonball, Mirrin, and Cyclops stood waiting. 

"Do you want me to bring us to our spot," Mirrin asked Cyclops, gesturing vaguely towards where they would need to be.

"Actually, no," he answered thoughtfully. "Can you shield us if we walk through the town?"

"Y'mean just march through the square?" Gambit asked as his eyebrow shot up.

"I want to get a lay of the land now that everything's standing. Case the joint, if you want to put it in familiar terms," Cyclops explained with a wry smile. "I don't think we're going to be lucky enough to keep the fighting away from civilization, so when we fall back, I'd like to have the advantage of familiar territory. Heaven knows, we'll need what we can get. Can you do that, Mirrin?"

"With ease," she replied, nodding at the idea. "Shall we go?"

The plans for defense of the town proper had been made somewhat loosely, the better to allow for flexibility in the wake of a village not yet destroyed. However, Gambit mused as they walked purposely down the only road that lead into the village square, nobody had anticipated the level of activity that had been interrupted when troops from the future stormed in on an otherwise pleasant, sunny day. 

Children and animals ran about, cars and wagons rode by, and old men sat under trees drinking cold water and yelling greetings at passers-by. Telepathically shielded by Mirrin, the quartet walked through the streets with their trained eyes surveying the scene. 

All of a sudden, a chicken flew straight at Cannonball. Knowing how strange it would look to any unsuspecting witnesses if the bird suddenly changed directions in mid-air, the young man jumped to try to avoid contact, knowing that if he blasted, he'd roast the creature. The other three couldn't help but laugh as the unknowing bird came back in the other direction for a second pass. "Ah traveled halfway 'cross the globe ta be chased by a chicken. Coulda done that back in Cumberland."

Gambit's laugh cut off abruptly as he happened to glance to his right. Three boys were shooting marbles, a fourth was scratching out the score with a rock against the nearby wall. He felt for the marbles in his pocket and squeezed them tightly. 

"It is important to never forget that there is always more than the fight," Mirrin said gently next to him. When Gambit looked up, he could see that her eyes were still trained on the laughing children. For some strange reason, it eased his mind a bit to see her affected thusly. Even if the baby in the Ukraine had been a bomb, it was an image he wouldn't soon forget. 

The rest of the walk through town was uneventful, save for the quartet nearly getting run over by the truck that Mirrin had tested out the EMP-blast on. 

"Are you sure this is the best way to do things?" Mirrin asked after Rogue radioed to let them know the other group was in position. They were most of the way through town now and the bustle had faded to a more gentle level. A group of older women sat in a circle shucking beans into a bowl and talking to and over each other. "The villagers would most definitely be interested in defending their homes and families..."

"Problem is that they're gon' think that they gotta defend themselves 'gainst us," Gambit fairly spat, also watching the women. "Dere ain't no good thing as a good mutie. If we let them do what they will, they'd throw us to the Kurioon and then fight them on their own."

"It's better to fight a one-front war than a two-front war," Cyclops added in agreement with his teammate. Soon, they were standing in a clearing and Cannonball pointed out which trees had the best sightlines before blasting up to check on the imminent approach of the Kurioon soldiers. "I'd rather suspect the townspeople of anti-mutant bias than have that suspicion confirmed. Remember what happened in China."

China had been almost comical. The X-Men had chased the Harvesters into rice paddies and away from a large marketplace. On the way to the Blackbird, they had been pelted with rocks, melons, and a few substances they didn't want to think about. Mirrin had had to teleport them back to the plane. 

"I am beginning to understand Nathan's... displeasure," Mirrin sighed and shook her head as Cyclops raised an eyebrow at her choice of words. "It is no wonder Apocalypse reigned supreme if his opponents chose to busy themselves with petty differences than take on a common enemy. It is a decadence that they will not survive to regret."

Cannonball flew back quickly through the trees. "They're on their way," he called ahead. "Three groups, Harvesters up front and energy storage tank in the rear just like the Sister said. They've got a new kind of robot. Not a lot of them, though."

"Do they look like the Colorless, except with red markings on their helmets," Mirrin asked carefully. 

"Ah think so, it's hard to tell with the sun glare," Cannonball confirmed. "They're carrying backpacks of some kind."

Gambit poked his head out of the tree he was hiding in when Mirrin cursed loudly. "Dese are the next kind, right?"

"Yes. Tactically, they are not much different than the Colorless, except that they are not as slow-moving," the Askani replied absently as she tried to make telepathic contact with Rogue, Wolverine, and Psylocke. "But it is with those rear packs that we will have to be concerned. Only the red-level robots carry them. They contain an external battery as well as explosives. The Colorless were programmed to run away if their internal battery ran down, but these have a much longer active life."

"That would explain why the last of the Harvesters were left to defend themselves. But...," Cyclops prompted. 

"But this second battery has a dual purpose," Mirrin finished. "Once the robot is incapacitated, the timer is activated on the combustible and the battery becomes part of the fuel."

"Sounds like one of Arcade's toys," Cannonball mused as he fiddled with his goggles. A moment later, he blasted straight up to check the approaching army's position.

"How long's the fuse," Gambit asked as he re-arranged his position in the tree. Idly he wondered if the cherry tree a few yards back might not be a preferable choice. 

"Ninety seconds, but we treat it as sixty," she answered, taking out the plastic explosive she had in her pack and tossing half of it up to Cannonball, who had swooped down low enough to be below the tree line even if he wasn't close enough to contribute anything to the conversation. "Because of the way the power is routed throughout their system, they will keep moving even after the countdown has begun. Red-levels have been known to go off even as they were firing their own weapons."

"The charge couldn't be too bad, right? They'd be taking out their own side if they went off while in formation," Cyclops mused, completing his by now rote checklist of the contents of his utility belt pockets. 

"Friendly fire is not a consideration of the Kurioon. They are all replaceable," Mirrin replied sourly. "The blast is extreme. These are transport troops, however, and as such are not in endless supply. They do send off a warning to the other robots, a reverse homing signal of sorts. Wolverine might hear it, although the rest of us cannot." 

"So what if we're not 'round de Wolverine?" Gambit asked.

"If you see one start to twitch, run."

"Dat's not a comfort."

"It was not meant to be."

Cannonball came flying down from above. "A half-mile and closing," he reported. "Ah'm goin' to set them to scurrying." He rose into the air once more, keeping close to the tree line as he headed towards the Kurioon detachment.

"Enough chatter, people, they're on their way." Cyclops flicked the safety off his rifle. 

Up in the air, once the immediate adrenaline run had been ridden out, Cannonball had time to think. 

This, he mused to himself, was a Cable moment. 

At some point in the past he couldn't quite remember, Sam had had enough down time to consider the differences in style of his three primary teachers. Careful consideration and minimal use of force was the way of Professor Xavier and his X-Men. Careful consideration and the application of 'necessary and sufficient' force was Magneto, even if that lesson had been taught while Magnus had been enemy and not mentor. But moments like these, when you realized that all the planning in the world wasn't going to matter if you didn't have a quick trigger finger, these were Cable moments. 

"Ah hope you appreciate that Ah was payin' attention," he spoke aloud - as if Cable, back in New York (although considering that they were back in time, he could still be in Brazil), could somehow hear him. 

He balled some of the plastic explosive Mirrin had given him. Another legacy of Cable's tutoring was the pop-caps he kept in one of his utility pockets - Sam didn't imagine Professor Xavier would be too thrilled to know that one of his minion carried detonators around on a routine basis. 

Laws of projectile motion being what they were, and Sam an expert at being a projectile in motion, fifteen seconds would be just about the right time for the bomb to do damage to the soldiers in quick march below. Cannonball launched the ball at the middle group of soldiers and pulled his rifle around to be ready to pick off survivors. 

"Fifteen seconds to contact," Mirrin warned the others. Cyclops nodded as the woman began what he suspected was some sort of Askani battle prayer. They were both hiding behind thick-trunked trees, parallel to each other and about ten yards ahead of where Gambit was perched in his tree. 

Gambit, for his part, said his own prayer to an authority whose existence he sometimes doubted, at least away from the battlefield.

"...ten...nine...eight," Psylocke counted out loud. Mirrin had immediately passed on Cannonball's message, along with a suggestion for her to keep a telepathic ear out for her teammates. Psylocke had bitten back a curt response - this was hardly the first time she'd have to use her telepathic skills in combat - and instead concentrated on making sure their positioning was as sound as they thought it was. Wolverine has picked the spot and she was inclined to think that he knew what he was doing.

"You got the townsfolk covered?" Rogue asked, gesturing with her head towards the village. 

"They won't hear a thing," she replied, reversing the way she was carrying her rifle so that it would be both easier accessed and more in the way. 

Wolverine put his cigar out against a rock and stretched casually. 

"...three...two...one," Cannonball muttered as he watched the explosion. Considering the amount of explosive he had used, the fireball was disproportionately large and he was close enough to feel the edge of what had probably been a very hot wind. "Musta hit a backpack." 

The soldiers changed formation to deal with the wreckage. The front group of Harvesters and their Colorless bodyguards sped up their march, heading straight into the ambush laid out by Gambit, Cyclops, and Mirrin. The remnants of the middle group, of which there were mercifully few, were falling back. 

The billowing smoke gave Cannonball a cloud cover by which he could blast closer to the third group, now halted. 

_Uh, Sister, when you have a minute, I have a question to ask,_ Cannonball thought in the direction of the Askani as he found more substantial cover. Alternating between the plasma charges and the rifle/pulse, he picked off robot soldiers from the middle group that were attempting to either fall back or speed up to join the others.

#_What is it, Samuel?_#

_That last group... There are a couple of soldiers that I didn't see before. They seem to be the ones in charge. They don't look like the others._

A long pause, long enough for Sam to wonder if something had happened so that Mirrin was unable to answer him and debate whether he should return to where the trio was probably about to engage the onrushing Harvesters and Colorless. 

#_Will you let me see through your eyes?_# Mirrin asked hesitantly, as if she knew the gravity of her request. #_It will save time and prevent possible errors in identification._#

A pause. _Come on in_, Sam agreed, not bothering to hide his trepidation. 

Letting someone in like this wasn't a comfortable feeling, even were Mirrin not still a relative stranger. During the battles against the Phalanx, Professor Xavier had needed to 'borrow' Sam's mind and that hadn't been a pleasant experience. Not only for the powerlessness - it meant leaving open access to all that you were - but also because the sharing meant a sudden shifting in visual perspective that left Sam terribly nauseous. During their X-Force days, Cable had only resorted to such a tactic as a last resort. 

A moment later, Sam felt the barest whisper across his consciousness. 

#_Thank you for trusting me..._# 

Not for the first time, Sam noted that Mirrin's mental voice was much gentler than her spoken one. It was the same with Cable, he mused idly, but not with any of the X-Men's telepaths. Jean, Betsy, and the Professor all had a strident tone to their telepathic voices that Sam found off-putting. 

#_Oh, flonq_,# Mirrin muttered from somewhere inside his ears. #_Dayspring was right._#

_And this means...?_ The other reason that Sam disliked sharing headspace was that it was a one-way connection. In return for the loan of his eyes and mind, the least he could hope for in return was some special insight. In Mirrin's case, pearls of Askani wisdom especially might prove useful especially now.

#_It means that the soldiers are being controlled by a telepath. At least these soldiers are_,# she explained ruefully. #_The one with the strange helmet is your missing Geneva woman... Samuel, how closely do you follow the tenets of your Professor Xavier?_#

He knew immediately where this was headed and fought the rebellion in his stomach. _I've killed, Sister. I don't enjoy it, and I'd rather not do it again, but I've done it_.

#_I understand. I am not ordering you and I would never force you to do something that is so contrary to your principles_,# she answered. Sam was comforted to hear the lack of recrimination in her mental voice - or maybe it was just the gentleness of it in and of itself. 

#_My ethics may be different than yours, Samuel, but to take advantage of your mental hospitality by telepathically forcing you to do anything is far beyond anywhere I would go willingly._# 

_I didn't mean... Well, maybe I did a little. But I was more thinking that you'd be disappointed or something_, he answered back a little sheepishly. 

#_Understood_,# she replied with something Sam was fairly sure was humor. #_And you won't disappoint me... As for our more immediate concern, The cyborgs are programmed already, so removal of the telepath won't immediately render them helpless. But it would prevent them from easily changing objectives._# 

Sam nodded, then shook his head at using a non-verbal gesture in a conversation with an unseen party. He knew what disabling the telepath would accomplish. The system of radio communication between the cyborgs had been explained to all of them, but Forge had yet to come up with an adequate means of disrupting the transmissions. 

_So it's not absolutely necessary, but it would really help should we get a leg up in this dance._ Sam wasn't sure whether or not to be amused at the subtlety of Mirrin's request. She wasn't really asking him to act counter to his beliefs, just making it really hard to justify not doing so. Or maybe it was the circumstances that were making it hard. 

# _'In times of struggle, pacifism is a theory dreamed of only by philosophers, cowards, and fools. The first will lose all that he has won, the second will regain nothing of what he has lost, and the third is incapable of understanding the difference.'_#

_So am I a philosopher, a coward, or a fool?_

#_You are among the few Nathan respects, and that is no small honor. Dayspring may resent much of what he has learned from the Sisterhood, but he understands that one must first be a victor before one may be a philosopher. There is a middle passage between fighting for one's principles and fighting without principles. The battle itself is the proving ground not only of the man, but also of the morals by which he stands._#

_He who thinks best, wins._

#_Not always, but enough._# Sam heard her chuckle gently. #_And that concludes today's lesson in Askani philosophy. Don't tell Dayspring; he'll think I'm trying to turn you into Blaquesmith and then he'll be most unbearable._#

_It'll be our secret._ Sam's smile faded when he felt a sudden tickle as Mirrin withdrew hurriedly and he mentally smacked himself for forgetting that she was also supposed to be one of three fighting off a battle unit. Telepath or not, it wasn't a good idea to keep her distracted for too long. 

It was only after the place where Mirrin's thoughts had sat in his mind had felt empty that Sam realized that she had never actually made the request. She was leaving it up to him. 

Down below and behind him, the confrontation continued. 

A trap, ludicrous in its simplicity, had been laid by Cyclops and Gambit. Based on his experience with the rebellion in the future, Cyclops had used his optic blasts to dig a pit in the road while the Gambit had found enough leafy tree branches to cover up the hole. Neither of the men thought the trap would work, let alone to the extent that it did. But a dozen Colorless soldiers, programmed by someone who had never seen such verdant locations, were eliminated from the field before a shot was even fired. 

Cyclops was chasing the rest of the detachment towards Rogue, Wolverine, and Psylocke when Gambit realized that Mirrin was looking a little less distracted. 

"Back amongst the living, hein?" He watched as she shook her head to clear the fog that invariably went with the end of her presumed psyche-hopping. "Though you're doin' all right without payin' the enemy any mind. Pun intended."

Mirrin raised an eyebrow in confusion. Like all telepaths, she was expert at doing two things at once. But when one of the two was warfare, her lifetime of soldier's training meant that she could operate almost on auto-pilot. "What did I do?" 

Gambit gestured at the smoke pouring out of the pit he and Cyclops had created. The air was thick with the now-recognizable smell of destroyed Kurioon - part cooked meat and part acrid odor of plastics and metal. "Lit the fire on a clam bake. Don't crack nice when you hit 'em, though."

Mirrin looked no less confused for the explanation, but glanced behind her compatriot, felt the residue of the plastic explosive on her fingers, and drew her own conclusions. "Where is Cyclops?" Even as she asked, she sent out a mental probe. 

"Tryin' to set the rest of them up wit' Wolverine. We oughta join the party," he answered, gesturing in the direction Cyclops had traveled.

Mirrin reached for Gambit's arm as she stood up. "I want to get there ahead of the rest of the troops. The worst is yet to come." With that, she reached out telepathically for the rest of the team and the two disappeared into thin air. 

Above and behind the vanishing pair, Cannonball perched in his hiding spot and pulled his goggles up so that he could bring the gun sight to his eye. He had seen a picture of the Swiss telepath only once, a bad photo that had come from her driver's license, but the resemblance was obvious. The tired frustration of the official photograph had been replaced with a sort of angry calm. From a distance, costume aside, she looked normal enough. But with the sights trained on her eyes, Cannonball could see all of the changes wrought to the once-innocent victim. There was no humanity left. The woman wore a helmet that Cannonball suspected was more useful as a transmitter than as protection. The red-marked cyborgs surrounding her were more than sufficient for that. 

The sight's magnifier brought his target into clear focus, but it did not provide such clarity for his peace of mind. 

Years ago, a young Sam Guthrie had joined the New Mutants because he could not justify killing anyone at the behest of his then-employer Sebastian Shaw. In contrast to Shaw, Xavier had preached peaceful conflict resolution, even if it meant sacrificing yourself for the survival of a population that would just as soon do you in as would the enemy. Xavier would accept anyone who came seeking sanctuary, be they government killers like Wolverine or gentle suburban kids like Kitty Pryde. All you had to do in return was swear not to take a life unless other lives were at stake. And even then, refusal to kill was acceptable. 

Young Sam Guthrie had grown up a little since then. He had seen that oath to preserve life cost as many souls as it saved as, time and again, opponents took advantage of the X-Men's reluctance to use lethal force. Frustration had led him to follow Cable even as the rest of the New Mutants had fallen away. Cable believed in the dream, but he was too battle-scarred to accept Xavier's means to their common end. And so Sam and the others that would become X-Force had been trained to shoot guns, blow up buildings, and, in short, terrorize those that would bring harm to mutantkind. 

But Cable had been careful. He had never put his charges in a position where they were faced with _having_ to break the oath they had taken to Professor X. They could do all the property damage they wanted, and usually did. But when it came time to end a life, that was left to Cable or Domino, if possible. 

At some point, Cable had told him once, Sam would have to decide whether killing was an acceptable option. It's an irrevocable decision with permanent consequences far more severe than breaking a promise to Xavier, and Cable had warned him it was not one to be taken lightly. It was a choice that had been taken out of the hands of both Cable and Domino, but if the kids in X-Force were lucky, they'd never have to be faced with that decision. Sam had considered himself lucky, in a way, that he'd joined the senior X-team before having to cross that particular bridge. 

Right now, however, Sam couldn't help but feel as if his luck had just run out. Shooting to wound wasn't an option with a telepath. 

"Ah'm sorry," he whispered, but he wasn't sure to whom he was apologizing. 

Down on the ground, the battle had moved from the trees to the road leading into the town itself. The Harvesters had been destroyed, but the Colorless were not backing down and retreating the way they had in the past. Thankfully for the X-Men, Forge's new weapon was proving to be more effective than its previous incarnations. 

Gambit and Mirrin shot their way towards Cyclops, who muttered a greeting into his radio. Once they reached him, they could see Rogue fighting hand-to-hand with a pair of soldiers in the near distance. 

"Cannonball in one piece?" Cyclops asked without turning around to face Mirrin.

Before she could answer, Mirrin winced as the psionic screams of a telepath in her death throes echoed in her skull. 

"Just fine," she replied as they started to jog towards the next phase of the battle. 

By the time the trio joined the group, a dozen more Colorless had arrived and the X-Men were clearly tiring. As they lost ground, the battle had meandered to the very edge of the town itself.

"Red-levels approaching," Cannonball called out over the radio sets as he blasted ahead of the incoming troops. He saw two Colorless approaching Gambit from behind. The Cajun seemed to have the pair in front of him under control, so Cannonball swooped down and picked up the two would-be ambushers and carried them off by the scruffs of their necks (really the edge of their body armor). 

After Gambit finished with the pair he was dealing with, he looked around for where to head next. Spotting Cyclops firing away with both optic blast and EMP rifle at a Red soldier, he ran towards the pair. 

Now that the team was reunited, they had been almost able to keep the Colorless from marching further towards the town. But the arrival of the Red soldiers was shifting the balance once more back in favor of the Kurioon. 

"Why are they not stopping?" Cyclops called out over the radio. "The Harvesters are destroyed; there's nothing else to do here."

"Why do they desecrate the bodies of the victims after the Harvesters are through," Psylocke asked rhetorically in response. She saw a Red soldier bearing down on Rogue from behind. "Damned things have no honor whatsoever," she muttered as she took aim at its back. "And they bring us down to their level." The Red cyborg turned around after Psylocke's plasma blast hit it, giving Rogue a chance to fly off, but otherwise seemed unharmed. 

Mirrin and Cannonball found themselves back-to-back as two Red cyborgs bore in on either side. "My back is your back," Cannonball called over to her. "When they get closer, I'll blast us out."

A pair of Colorless joining in made it a small circle closing around the pair. "I suggest a quicker get-away," Mirrin called back as she grabbed Cannonball's arm and teleported them a few feet away. 

Wolverine was slashing through a pair of Colorless when he started to hear a high-pitched whistle. He didn't know how long it has been sounding before he was able to hear it over the din of the battle, and it took a few seconds to realize what it must be. "One of them's gonna blow," he called out as he scanned the scene to figure out which Red-level soldier it could be. 

"Clear out, clear out," Cyclops yelled out over the radio. "We can come back after it blows. Clear out!"

None of them were standing immobile and all of them were in some sort of combat mode. Figuring that his healing factor would cover up for any mistake, Wolverine ran towards a pair to see if the whistling noise grew louder. It didn't, so Wolverine looked for the ones standing closest to teammates. Psylocke was still within arm's length of one. 

Cannonball grabbed Cyclops under his arms and flew up into the air. Rogue dropped from the sky towards Mirrin and Gambit as they ran towards Psylocke and Wolverine closed in from the other side. 

"That's the one," Wolverine screamed ahead, pointing to the one nearest Psylocke. "Get them outta here, Aska..."

The explosion was deafening, the light blinding. Even hovering over the tree line, Cannonball felt the hot air and flying tree shards bounce off of the blast shield that protected him and Cyclops. After the scorching wind died down, they dropped down to find the others. 

Rogue had been thrown through the trees, her invulnerability making it a harder trip on the trees than on herself. She was making her way back through the path she had accidentally cleared, her uniform torn and shredded. Wolverine lay face-down, still smoldering from burns and covering in open wounds that were still horrifying even in full knowledge of the power of his healing factor. He groaned after a feeble attempt to move. 

"Stay there," Cyclops told him gently as he knelt down next to Wolverine and pulled away a rock that was lying underneath his head. "Nobody's coming." 

"Where're the Sister and Gambit and Psylocke?" Cannonball looked around. There was an eerie calm that was all the more so for having come right after the deafening cacophony of extended warfare. 

"Anybody dere?" Cyclops' radio crackled as if on cue. "Gambit to anyone..."

"Where are you," Cyclops stood as he held the mouthpiece up from where it had fallen to his jaw. "Are you three okay?"

"Next to de plane and I'm fine, 'xcept for a coupla cuts 'n' bruises and a set of deep-fried body armor. Gonna have to make it back by foot, so it'll be a few..."

"What happened to..." Cyclops trailed off. 

"Didn't get to Psylocke 'til after the blast went off." Gambit's voice sounded raw and he coughed hard and then stifled a groan. "Askani was flashin' us in-and-out, like a strobe light, until we got t'her. Den we popped over here. Askani took one look at Psylocke and took 'er home."

"Home? Back to Westchester?" Rogue asked as she fiddled with her radio set, surprised it still worked. She re-fastened it to a more secure part of her uniform. "Y'all were right next to the plane. The Blackbird's got enough toys..."

"But we ain't got no doctor," Gambit pointed out. "And Psylocke's gonna need a lot more'n dat."

"Gambit, stay there. Cannonball's coming to fetch you," Cyclops said, nodding to the young man before he blasted off. "I think I see a couple of Colorless coming our way. We're going to have to do this ourselves, it looks like." 

***

At some distant point in the past, probably during his stint with the Avengers, Hank McCoy had come to wonder about how colors affected how something was viewed. Sure, everyone knows you shouldn't paint classroom walls yellow and so forth, but there were more subtle aspects. Would Nightcrawler be any different if he were green, for instance. 

Nowadays, these sorts of thoughts - especially any involving dying Kurt different colors - only came when he was as he was now. Too wired from the recent mission in Brazil to go to sleep, but too tired to do anything really productive. 

And so he was here, at his desk in the med lab, staring transfixed at a three-dimensional model of a double helix as he pressed the key that changed the color scheme of the model. The strands were shades of blue, then green, then purple, then some hideous multicolored scheme that he was sure he hadn't programmed into the projector, then red... but none of the color changes brought about any inspiration. The genome damaged by the Legacy Virus was still incurable no matter what color Hank made it. 

They had gotten back from Brazil without any sort of injury requiring supervised medical care. Jean and Bobby knew where the bandages were and Ororo could be trusted to seek help if her wrist started to feel any worse. As a group, they had raided the fridge, tended to both wounds and weapons, made sure things would be ready for the next team to use, and then headed off to bed. All except Hank McCoy, who ignored Bobby's frown of disapproval and headed down to the underground complex. 

Since he was going to be up for a while, Hank had sent young Guthrie to sleep an hour or two early before he had to leave for Lebanon, telling Sam that he'd keep both the monitor room and the med lab doors open. Technically, Hank should have officially moved his bouncing blue rear into the monitor room for duty an hour before the alarm had finally sounded, but his athletic prowess had gotten him in position from the med lab without too much delay. 

That was hours ago. Alex was at the monitor now, having gotten up after only a few hours of sleep complaining of hunger. Of course, Alex had slept most of the ride home from Brazil, so it probably added up to sufficient rest. And even if it wasn't, Alex being a Summers, he was probably dozing in front of the screens anyway. 

The DNA model, set to change colors every ninety seconds even when Hank wasn't playing with it, was back to being a multi-colored monstrosity when the air around it started to shimmer. Hank had had his back to the projection at the time, so the significance didn't register until a telepathic howl reverberated in his skull. 

#McCoy!!#

Shaking away his blurry vision, Hank spun around and froze. Mirrin was standing next to the projector holding the limp body of Psylocke. 

Springing into action, Hank scooped the fallen woman out of Mirrin's arms and carried her into the hospice part of the med-lab, depositing her on the nearest bed and running her over with the Shi'ar scanner before he even asked what happened. 

"A bomb. She was too far away from anyone to be pulled away." Mirrin's voice was more a croak than anything else. Were the readings on the med scanner not so alarming, Hank would have done more than just ask over his shoulder whether the teleporter was hurt. But Psylocke's vital signs were negligible and the blood loss profound. 

"What the hell... Mirrin, you look like you were the guest of honor at an auto-da-fé... oh," Alex's voice trailed off as he looked around from the doorway. The telepathic scream had no doubt woken everyone in the house and it had sent him flying from the monitor room. "Who's that... shit. How bad is she?"

"Bad," Mirrin replied weakly, then shook her head and leaned against the projector for a moment before standing up again. "Alex, can you fight? We need support."

"I'm about half-charged," he warned even as he nodded. "Let me go change." He spun around and nearly crashed into Jean, who had the good sense to telekinetically close the hospice room doors behind him before anyone else could arrive. Surface thoughts had told her all that she needed to know to pass on to the others as they showed up. 

Alex returned in his uniform and Mirrin gave a meaningful glance to Jean before she reached for Havok and the two disappeared. 

"Warren," Jean said without turning around, "we need to talk."

***

Domino had long ago gotten used to this. Which wasn't to say that it didn't piss her off to no end. Just that when Nathan suddenly went glassy-eyed and silent and proceeded to drag her someplace without either explaining or allowing her to grab her sunglasses, she at least knew he wasn't doing it _solely_ to piss her off. If he wanted to do that, he had a separate list of quirks to employ. 

They had been getting eerily domestic, the two of them. Sitting a little too closely in front of the television, watching "Young Frankenstein" (even though Nathan didn't get some of the ethnic jokes), when all of a sudden, the psi-link resonated like a plucked violin string and Nate got a blank look in his eyes, and Domino knew that she'd be watching the movie alone for a while. 

Just before the end of the movie, Nathan had gotten up suddenly and with only a "come on" had grabbed his jacket and headed for the door. Twenty minutes later, here they were. 

She gave him until they were passing the 125th Street exit of the West Side Highway to say something. But the exit came and went and the only noise that could be heard was the rhythmic thump-thump of wheels on the road. 

"... so I told the White Rabbit that I sure as hell wasn't going to be eating any strange chocolates. I mean, I didn't let the kids go Trick-or-Treating, I couldn't very well indulge in taking candy from strangers myself, right? Although watching the neighbors try to Trick 'Star instead of Treating him might have been well worth checking for razor blades in the apples... On the other hand, Jimmy's a royal pain in the ass when he's on a sugar high..."

"Uh, Dom?" Nathan didn't take his eyes off the road, but Domino could feel his attention snapping back into place along their psi-link.

"Did I hear something, Monchichi? I could have sworn I heard something, but no... I mean, who else could it be? You've got your thumb in your mouth, else I'd think it was you talking."

"Dom, you can stop talking to the mirror ornament now." Now he did turn to face her and was rewarded with a frown that echoed along the link. 

"Can I? Will you tell me what the flonq we're doing going ninety on the crossover to the Harlem River Drive for? Not that I mind the speed, especially since it's your parents who are going to have to pick up the ticket should we get pulled over..."

"Lebanon ended badly," he said simply, then gunned the accelerator to edge in front of a Toyota with New Jersey plates. 

"So I figured," she switched immediately from pissed-off sarcastic to pissed-off businesslike. And it was what she had expected. "Is there a body count?"

"No," Nathan replied, frowning either at the situation or at the minivan that was doing sixty in the left lane. "Mirrin says that Gambit and Psylocke are in bad shape. The Blackbird should be landing in about an hour."

"Mirrin? That wasn't Jean you were spacing out with?" Domino didn't know why she hadn't thought it was Mirrin, except perhaps the notion that the Askani sister seemed content to work apart from Nathan at a level that most of the others weren't. In the time since they had all banded together to fight the Kurioon, Mirrin had not once sought Nathan's advice on any sort of battle plan. Nor, for that matter, had Nathan tried to do the same. 

"She was talking to both of us."

Domino was less surprised that the three telepaths could hold a conference call from halfway across the globe. "What else did she have to say? You were off-planet for a while."

"The Kurioon has been busy," Nathan snorted with what Domino knew was self-recrimination. She swallowed her groan and started mentally watching the psi-link. "They're starting to produce Red-Levels. The good news is that there weren't a lot of them in Lebanon. The bad news is that the ones that were there were enough to send two of the team home on bio-beds."

"So we got lucky in Brazil?" The operation had run smoothly, except for the part where the Kurioon soldiers had seemingly anticipated their plan to surround them. But Havok had deep-fried the pair of soldiers that had snuck up behind Nathan and Jean and things had improved from there. 

"Only in the sense that we were battling the decoy and not the real thing," Nathan answered bitterly. "Mirrin had to 'port everyone back in time to save the village. The Red-Levels were probably in test phase there."

"And they passed," Domino concluded, trying not to cringe as Nathan cut off an SUV in order to get into an EZPass lane. 

"They passed," Nathan confirmed flatly. "But the team did knock out the telepath pulling the strings, so maybe that solves our mystery from Brazil."

"Does it? If Lebanon was happening at the same time as Brazil..."

"They weren't simultaneous. Consecutive maybe, but not simultaneous," he shook his head as he spoke and Domino wasn't sure if it was out of anger or frustration or just that peculiar jealous-thing he did when someone else got into heavy fighting and he wasn't involved. 

The rest of the ride was in silence. Not the tense silence that Domino's monologue had interrupted earlier, instead a reflective silence of the sort that two professionals on their way to their jobs might appreciate. 

As expected, the mansion was in some sort of frenzy. Storm met the pair upon arrival. 

"I am glad that you are here," Storm said, although from past experience Domino wasn't sure whether the woman included her in the greeting. "Jean is with Cerebro, keeping contact with the Blackbird. Cyclops reports a safe exit, but I do not imagine that the tension here will dissipate until the team has returned." 

As if on cue, a commotion from down the hall approached and Warren stormed past the trio in the foyer, Bobby hot on his heels.

"Leave me alone, Bobby! Just leave me the hell alone!" Before the younger man could catch up, Archangel lifted off into the sky with angrily beating wings. 

"All I'm saying," Bobby called after him, "is that you have to be patient..." He trailed off and turned around to face the group. "Hank wanted me to keep Warren out of the med lab, not to send him into a headlong collision with the next flight out of Westchester County Airport," he muttered, more to himself than to them.

Nathan, Domino, and Storm knew that Bobby was making light only to cover up for his concern, but since none of the three were especially close to either Warren or Bobby, they said nothing. Drake understood their silence and shrugged. 

"Psylocke's here?" Cable asked Storm as they moved through the house towards the downstairs complex. "I thought you said Jean was in contact with the Blackbird."

"She is," Drake confirmed as they passed through the kitchen and he grabbed an apple off of the counter. "Your pal gave us all migraines with her telepathic yodel when she teleported into the medlab with Betsy. Then she grabbed Alex and popped back to Lebanon. They're all on their way back now."

"She just appeared, changed passengers, and then disappeared?" Domino asked, raising an eyebrow. Although considering the tales the others had told, this really shouldn't have been that surprising. 

"It doesn't sound any better even if you were there when it happened," Bobby replied, punching in the code to the downstairs entrance. "Once Betsy's out of danger, we'll be able to laugh about it. Except Alex. He's been retired from this for too long - he keeps getting surprised. I don't know why she didn't make a second trip for Gambit; Scott said to have the med lab ready for him as soon as we land."

"She's teleporting across time as well as place," Cable explained as they walked down the stairs. "It's hard enough by yourself, let alone with others." 

Twenty minutes later, the siren sounded to indicate the imminent arrival of the Blackbird. Hank stood in the hangar with a bio bed floating next to him, the others standing close but not in the way. 

The plane door opened and Rogue flew out, a pale and dazed Gambit laying prone in her arms. She placed him gently on his back on the bed, but Remy turned onto his side and let loose wracking coughs that produced blood and a pained groan. Shooing Rogue away, Hank placed a Shi'ar breathing mask over his patient's face and walked quickly with the bed towards the hangar door. 

While everyone watched Rogue chase after the departing pair, the others disembarked. Some were a little bloodied, but all were dirty and visibly drained as they stood around the plane.

Domino saw that Mirrin stood off to the side, a little apart from the others, exchanging telepathic conversation with Cable if the matching stares were any indication. 

Jean gently fingered a gash on Cyclops' cheek, her brow creased with worry. 

"It's just a scratch," he said hoarsely, but gently. "How's Betsy?"

"If she lives through the night," Storm answered, "then her prognosis is quite good. The internal injuries were such that Henry postponed using the Shi'ar equipment on her external wounds until he was sure that all of the internal ones had been detected. After this crisis has passed - and it will pass," her voice was imperial in its emphasis, "then she shall be up and about in no time... But what of Remy?" 

"Ribs," Alex replied as he rolled his neck until it popped loudly. He frowned at the noise and then began walking towards the showers. "He didn't say anything until they had already punctured something, the idiot."

"Gumbo's gotta get over this guilt crap," Wolverine growled as he followed Alex towards the showers. "Getting Rogue back won't do any good if she's visitin' his tombstone."

"Noticed that," Bobby agreed dryly and looked around. "You're missing someone, aren't you?"

"Ah'm here," Cannonball's voice came from the Blackbird. "Ah just thought Ah dropped somethin'." He poked his head out of the door, the rest of his body quickly following. 

"Speaking of missing flyers," Jean said, clearing her throat gently and looked pointedly at Bobby. "Now that I've seen everyone safely back, I'm going to get Warren out whatever tree he's hiding in."

"What did you do, Bobby?" Cyclops asked after Jean had left. 

"Why is it what _I_ did? Why does it have to be my screw-up instead of Warren's being high-strung and emotional?" It was a complaint without conviction, however. "I was a little too effective in getting him to stop hovering over Hank."

Scott had known Bobby and Warren since they were all teenagers and knew that Bobby was probably right in sharing the blame. But he understood Warren's predicament - he himself was a royal bastard whenever Jean got hurt - so his only reply was a sigh and a nod of his head before he, too, went off in the direction of the showers. The others followed at their own pace. 

Domino was still leaning against the wall when Cable turned to her. "I think there's coffee upstairs. And cookies."

"You're awfully mellow," Domino drawled as she pushed off the wall to follow. "Normally, you're jumping down people's throats to get the debrief done faster. This... this is post-coital, almost. Or post-debriefing, which is really about the same."

"If I hadn't gotten so much information out of Mirrin, I'd resent that remark," he answered back, narrowing his eyes at her comment. "If it eases your paranoia, we're going to need the coffee. It's going to be a long meeting."

Once they were in the kitchen, Domino fiddled with the handle of her coffee mug. "Why was Sam hiding in the plane?"

"You noticed that, too?" Nathan asked as he sat down.

"It was kind of hard not to," Domino snorted as she followed him to the table. True to form, there were bakery cookies on a plate already out. "Even if you weren't witness to all of the brawls that started over who was first out of the PACRAT. Sam hates flying on anything but his own steam."

"I don't know what that was about," Nathan sighed, pursing his lips. "He was shielding much more strongly than he normally does. If anything, his shields have gotten softer since he left X-Force, but why he was screwed down like that..."

"Does Mirrin know anything?"

"I didn't ask her. I'm not sure she'll tell me if I do. We might have to get it out of Sam," he said as he drained his cup. 

"I thought you two had that 'keeping secrets' discussion," Domino said curiously. 

"We did," Nathan confirmed. "If she was pulling some Askani trick, she is going to go to every length _not_ to tell me. _Especially_ after that talk."

"You're assuming she's the source of Sam's little moment." She reached for a cookie and bit delicately. 

"She was a little... dodgy when we spoke," Nathan explained as he pushed the crumbs on his napkin around with his index finger. "That, and Sam didn't look like it was his usual X-Men inferiority complex that was bothering him."

"Where did we screw up to get that effect?" Domino mused, although she didn't mean to sound so full of levity. 

There was silence for a moment, but neither of them needed the psi-link to tell the other that they were still thinking about Sam's behavior. 

In their more private thoughts, both Nathan and Domino considered the time spent together with X-Force as a quasi-family experience. And as dysfunctional children are the product of dysfunctional parents, so the X-Force kids all bore various evidences of having learned by watching them. All, that is, except Sam. Sam had somehow remained fundamentally untouched by the lunacy that surrounded him, an island of calm in a group known for shooting first and thinking second. His balance was what made him a good leader, but that balance was off-center now. And his two onetime ersatz parents saw and were worried.

"You want to talk to him, or should I?" Domino caught Nathan's glance. 

"I think you'd better do it. If Mirrin's behind it, he might not want to talk to somebody with an Askani medallion around their neck." He fingered the medallion as he spoke. "After you're done, then I can corner him so that we can swap stories about being manipulated by the Sisterhood."

Domino was about to say something, but decided not to when the voices of various X-Men could be heard approaching the kitchen. 

"Coffee, good idea," a freshly washed Scott said as he entered. "We're going to be at this a while, I suspect. Debrief in ten."

***

http://www.geocities.com/nikimarzione/ 


	12. FP 12: Pas de Deux

Future Pluperfect: Chapter 12 

* * *

Hank had finally gotten fed up and thrown him out of the med lab. Warren would have put up a fight, but he heard Betsy laughing in his mind that he was being a nag and she'd see him in the morning. So he had left. 

It had been afternoon when he had descended the stairs into the basement complex, but there was only moonlight through the kitchen windows as he made his way back up. There were two plates covered in tin foil on the counter and a note from Bobby saying that one was for him, the other for Hank, and don't be a dweeb and forget to take the tin foil off before reheating in the microwave. 

He ate in silence. A curious silence, considering the usual cacophony of the mansion when this many people were in residence. But not an unwelcome one as it gave him time and space to think.

"Don't be mad at Cable," Jean had implored him earlier. "Or Mirrin. They didn't bring the Kurioon here. And we'd be a lot worse off if they weren't here themselves."

To be honest with everyone including himself, Warren hadn't considered whether or not he was mad at Cable. But he supposed he was; Jean would know and she wouldn't say those sorts of things otherwise. 

As he chased errant macaroni across the plate, Warren pondered. He wasn't angry... but he was resentful. And the more Cable was around, the easier it was for Warren to focus that resentment towards him. 

He was resentful of being dragged away from his business during busy season - it was the end of a financial quarter, for crying out loud. He was resentful of the ungrateful wretches the X-Men had been saving left and right ever since they'd figured out what the hell the Kurioon was. He was resentful of how Scott and Jean and Bobby and Hank and even (especially) Betsy had _automatically_ assumed that they could sound the alarm and he would just drop everything and run to Westchester and pull on a uniform. 

But most of all, he was resentful of how casually everyone seemed to be taking the fact that with the group itself, casualties were starting to mount. Betsy was only a few days removed from lying charred and senseless on a bio bed, but she was already planning on wheedling Scott into letting her back onto an away team. _When did we go from defending ourselves and our kindred to... this? Shipments of guns, fancy artillery, battle tactics..._ For some reason, these things bothered him more than time-traveling soldiers from the future, either the ones on his side or the ones on the other. Why this was still Cable's fault, however, Warren wasn't sure. Old habits. 

A dim cry from somewhere else on the floor shook Warren from his maudlin reverie. It was a cry of laughter, however, so Warren, sick of his own thoughts, dumped his dishes in the dishwasher and drew a cup of tea from the samovar and followed the noise. 

Warren didn't consider him an especially social member of the team; he oftentimes didn't consider himself a member of the team at all. But after a week spent mostly in the med lab with only the mutterings of a Hank immersed in his Legacy Virus research and the rasp-rasp of the ventilator on which Betsy had been dependent, he was in the mood for some sort of socializing. Especially if it distracted him from these kinds of moods. 

Wandering down the hallway towards the entertainment room, he could hear voices and music. A loud, deep laugh that sounded like Scott (but could have been Alex) was offset by a squeal that could only belong to Rogue and a voice raised in indignant protest that sounded suspiciously like Sam. 

Warren turned down the hallway that led to the voices and the music and nearly collided with Mirrin. For a telepath, the woman (girl?) looked remarkably surprised - from his experiences with Charles, Jean, and Betsy, Warren knew that telepaths tended to either always know that you were coming or be unwilling to admit that they didn't. 

"Didn't mean to startle you," he said as he raised his hands in apology, taking care not to spill his tea. 

"I was not paying attention as well as I should have been," Mirrin replied with a shake of her head and a wry smile. "My mind was elsewhere, although not in the usual telepathic sense."

He chuckled in spite of himself. While he still saw the cold-blooded warrior every time he looked upon Mirrin, Warren was aware that she did actually have a personality. One that tended towards sarcasm, apparently, but she seemed to be willing to aim it at herself as often as anyone else. 

"You're looking at the photos?" 

The hallway was lined with pictures of the various X-Men lineups. 

She nodded.

"You're not going to find Cable in any of these," he said as he gestured with his free hand at the wall she stood before. "The other teams are on the other side. Nathan's never stooped to join the parent squad. Although that would be a little too literal for him, so I suppose it's understandable."

"I know Nathan well enough to not need to see his picture," Mirrin replied. "I am trying to identify everyone else. To put legend to face, as it were."

"Legend?"

"The Xavierites, the X-Men...They -- you - are the stuff of legend in my time," she said softly, an embarrassed smile playing across her face and then disappearing. "Some are the characters in stories village cronies tell little children, some are heroes written about in books long since destroyed... To see what everyone really looked like, to _meet_ the people who you were never quite sure existed..." 

"A mixed blessing, I suppose. Heroes knocked off pedestals and all that." But Warren had to admit to himself that he hadn't supposed at all. He hadn't thought much about whether Mirrin knew who any of them were apart from Scott and Jean. "Cable's certainly gotten down to what he thinks is wrong with our time."

"Nathan is not one for sympathies either given or received," Mirrin said simply. "He has suffered unimaginable pains and knows that they are unimaginable to those who have not - who do not - live through them as he has. That, and he's notoriously short on etiquette." Here she rolled her eyes as Warren swallowed a chortle, "And he tends to equate niceties with hypocrisy. Warriors deal only in truths and Nathan has forgotten how to be anything but a warrior."

Warren couldn't think of anything appropriate to say to that bit of insight. 

Mirrin must have sensed his discomfort and turned back to face the photos on the wall. "Is this the earliest portrait?"

"Yeah," Warren confirmed and pointed out the faces. "Scotty's gotten better glasses since then; Bobby can grow facial hair now, at least I think he can; Jeannie really hasn't aged a bit; that's me in my short-hair days; and Hank before he stopped dressing like a kid from Dunfee." He waited a beat, until her brow furrowed in confusion. "Hank and I didn't turn blue until later on. Separate self-inflicted incidents."

Mirrin looked consideringly at the photo for a moment before she let Warren guide her to the next few pictures. While she had paused momentarily in front of the group photo that had had Kitty Pryde standing an inch too close to Piotr Rasputin, the photos didn't seem to fascinate her as much as the first one had until they were stopped before the fifth picture. 

"That's right before the Morlock Massacre," Warren began, trying to keep his voice even. But wasn't sure how well he succeeded and knew that the telepath standing next to him would have picked up on it. "The little picture tucked into the corner is the first X-Factor, which is really just the five of us from the beginning, except with better uniforms. There's a bigger version behind us, with the rest of the satellite teams. That's Storm still in her punk phase; Rogue's got a new haircut yet again; Wolverine, Piotr, and Kurt don't ever change; I can't remember if Kitty's calling herself Shadowcat by this point or if she's Ariel or Sprite or whatever Charles tried to call her; and that young lady is yet another twist in the Summers family tree. Her name is..."

"Rachel," Mirrin whispered, then added something else in a language that Warren couldn't even begin to place. "I'd know the Mother Askani anywhere. She hides her scars here." Mirrin touched the photo gently, almost reverentially.

"Hm? I'll have to take your word for it. I didn't really meet her until Jean and Scott's wedding." Warren was again unsure of what to say. He had known about Rachel's involvement with Scott and Jean's time in the future, but the whole story had only been pressed out of Scott after too many beers one late summer night and since Warren hadn't been around much when most of the events had occurred, it had all sounded somewhat... abstract. 

"Hey, there you guys are," Bobby called as he turned the corner, shattering the fragile peace of the moment. "Mirrin, want to get some more cultural exposure? Watch Rogue and Alex fight over music videos. Logan said it's a cure for anyone who ever gets nostalgic about Australia."

I thought I heard young Master Guthrie," Warren said, covering up for his introspectiveness and wondering why he did so. Not that Bobby wouldn't see through him in a heartbeat anyway. 

"Sam's trying to defend the Allman Brothers. Rogue's siding with Alex on that one," Bobby laughed. "So whattya say? Or have we scared you off again, Mirrin?"

Mirrin smiled weakly. Her reasons for avoiding such group activities had been closer to the opposite - she knew that the others did not yet accept her as anything other than Nathan's lieutenant. 

"C'mon, you've not been entertained until you've seen a Summers squirm," Bobby cajoled, giving her his best lopsided grin. "Well, you've probably seen Cable squirm, which is undoubtedly more fun than watching Alex make pained faces. But Cable's not around, Scotty's off with Jean, so Alex will have to do. And he does, oh, he does."

Before Mirrin could say anything, Bobby looped his arm around hers at the elbow. "And yes, Warren, I know I get too much fun out of bothering Scott's little brother. But I don't have a little brother and after what the four of you did to me, I deserve it."

"Did I say anything?" Warren asked with what he hoped was an innocent, dewy expression. Not that torturing Alex hadn't been all of their amusement at one point or another earlier in their X-days. 

"You were about to," Bobby accused with a delighted smile. "I'm not even the telepath, but I could tell. You're coming, right, Mirrin?"

She smiled. "I will join you in a moment, if that's all right?"

"That's fine. It'll give me time to work on getting Logan to take his boots off the coffee table," Bobby agreed and headed back in the direction from whence he had come. 

Warren started to follow behind, but then paused. "Mirrin?"

"Yes?" She turned from where she had gone back to examining one of the photos. 

"I... I just wanted to thank you. For saving Betsy. I know she's been... _we've_ been a little distant towards you, but..."  
  
"But nothing," Mirrin demurred. "Psylocke is a compeer and regardless of her feelings towards me, my obligation is to keep her alive."

"Just doing your job, huh," Warren sighed, then nodded. The moment had indeed passed. "Then just accept my apologies for my behavior. I know you've probably got something wise and pithy to say about that, too, but it'd make me feel better to just get the words out."

With that Warren turned to follow Bobby and Mirrin was left to stare at the photograph of a young woman who would grow up to be a deity.

***

_I should have paid more attention during physics lectures_, Jean Grey-Summers mused to herself as she played with the hem of her shirt. _Maybe that way, I could have even a vague clue about what's going on._

"That won't work," Cable was saying with a frown as Jean shook her head and tried to follow the proceedings once more. With a rare night off, she and Scott had gotten home later than intended the previous evening and Jean was starting to feel it.

Forge's face replaced the schematic on the video screen as Cable continued speaking. "The cyborgs' processor has a multi-channel variance built in. In my own time, we tried scramblers a lot more complicated than that." 

It was a three-way conference call between Forge's workshop, Muir Island, and the mansion. The official purpose of which, after a discussion about Betsy Braddock's health, was to collaborate on ideas for weapons and defenses. The unofficial purpose, Jean had ruefully decided, was to out-geek the average Star Wars convention. 

In theory, it should have been a dynamic moment with Cable's experience serving as complement to Forge's, Brian Braddock's and Kitty Pryde's technical expertise. In practice, it was four very strong personalities each with supreme confidence in their own knowledge. Everyone thought they were right and very little productive conversation was taking place. 

Jean was here ostensibly to facilitate the process, as she knew each of the four better than they knew each other. But in reality, it was to serve as referee. Just in case. _I'm going to kill Hank. At least he'd be able to contribute something. Me, I just sit here like a dumb mute._

But Hank had pleaded med-lab duty, even though both Gambit and Psylocke were out of any danger and nobody else was suffering from anything worse than residual soreness. And so Jean was left to ponder whether it would be ethical to give her long-time friend a migraine. Just because. 

"...but maybe if I could figure out why those EM packs didn't work, then we put some kind of randomizer...," Forge mused aloud. He looked tired to Jean's eyes. While they were all running around and getting shot at, he was doing his own fair share of the work - shipments from his workshop had them on a first-name basis with all of the local FedEx drivers. 

"Did you check to see if you were shorting out the ion accelerator," Brian asked with sudden interest. "You modified the equipment from a standard plasma rifle, correct? They come with enough anti-EM safeties that even Magneto himself would have a time of it to get one to so much as leak..."

"Although he's probably been practicing," Kitty semi-grumbled as she typed something on a keyboard in front of her. The Muir Island monitor was suddenly covered with scrolling numbers. "Ooops, sorry about that. Meant for it to sidebar... there. The most random randomizer known to man." Numbers and symbols scrolled along the side of the screen. 

Cable stared intently at the rapidly rolling sequence. "That looks almost like the battle language," he muttered, turning to Jean. 

As Jean squinted to look, Kitty giggled. "It's a combo of numbers and the alphabet in WingDings font. Word processor cryptography, sorta. Here, I'll send you both the code."

After a moment, Forge laughed deeply. "It's ingenious, in it's own garden-variety-desktop-like way. Very stylish coding."

"It was Rachel's idea," Kitty said softly, but proudly. "And Doug's old randomizer program."

"That's what she used to play with on the old toaster," Brian said, realization dawning happily. "When she wasn't changing the bloody password."

"Rachel..." Cable furrowed his brow as he looked over the number sequences that much more closely.

"Don't worry, Nathan, I don't think the Askani battle language derived its written form from WingDings," Jean comforted, trying not to laugh as he glared first at the screen and then at her. "But about those electromagnetic pulses, Forge..."

"Yes?" 

Jean tried not to be hurt at his surprise at her participating in the conversation other than to shut someone up. "You said that you couldn't get them to work. They worked just fine for us. In fact, Alex..."

"I played with them," Cable interrupted. "They didn't work when we got them, so I fixed them."

"And you didn't see fit to tell anyone," Brian bit off. 

Jean groaned. Things had been going so well for a moment...

"I was about to bring it up before Kitty started with the randomizer." Cable failed to sound repentant. 

"So what was it?" Forge was, as ever, more concerned with the technology than any slights, real or perceived. "Braddock's right about the ion accelerator. I checked them out with a voltmeter, but couldn't see the problem."

"You tested the EM pulse first," Cable stated.

"It made more sense that way; I could see the effects of the pulse and the bullet before the plasma incinerated the target... of course," Forge sighed. "I can't believe I overlooked it." 

"Hey, I think the six hour turnaround between request and shipping was pretty good," Kitty protested. 

"Nathan, what did you use to block the accelerator?" Brian asked, the same look of sudden illumination upon his face. 

"Next time Xavier's on-planet, someone should make sure that he doesn't look too closely at the pewter service in the dining room," Cable suggested.

There was general laughter, especially Jean, who knew how much Xavier hated that tea set. There was a running joke involving cockroaches about how that tea service had survived every single mansion destruction. 

"What made you think of adding an extra layer of shielding?" Forge asked as the schematic for the rifle came on-screen. 

"Before we left for Brazil, I shot off a few rounds to see if I could fix whatever the problem was," Nathan began. "Havok was doing some last minute target practice..."

"Cripes," Brian yelped. "Good thing you're half metal. Or do you conduct?"

Jean tried very hard to shake the image of Cable's left hand as an electrical plug. 

"I grabbed the teapot and did the modifications on the way to Brazil," Cable finished, ignoring Braddock's question and sending Jean a dirty look.

"How did... never mind," Kitty said and shook her head. "T-O tops tea service, gotcha. So now we've got working EM rifles, plus a randomizer to keep the Kurioon from immediately adapting..." 

After a few more minutes of conversation, Jean stood up. "I'm going to resign my position as committee mascot. Promise me you won't kill each other, okay?"

The others bid farewell and Jean breathed a sigh of relief as she exited the monitor room. 

"Now all we need is an effective communications disruptor..."

***

"You sure you're supposed to be doing that?" Bobby stood hovering over the lounge chair with hands on hips in frank disapproval.

Remy opened his eyes and blew cigarette smoke in Bobby's direction. He had heard Drake coming, but hadn't thought that his purpose was to talk to him. "Henri said I couldn't go up on the roof to smoke, not dat I couldn't smoke."

Bobby sighed heavily and took a step back so that he wasn't looming. 

"Hank didn't say you couldn't probably because he didn't think you were dumb enough to try it," he said irritatedly, waving the smoke away. "Ten days ago you were coughing up blood because your lung had been perforated and collapsed, and now you're smoking. Unbelievable."

Bobby had been thinking about saying something for a few days now. Ever since he had noticed that Remy was sliding into that insular funk that he had been when he had first returned to the mansion after Antarctica. But a good moment hadn't presented itself, then he had been called away on a mission, then Rogue had wigged out... 

But somewhere along the line, probably on the flight back from Kenya, Bobby had realized that if he was going to be a do-gooder, he'd have to make the right moment. Especially since Remy seemed to possess the mutant ability to avoid being caught for awkward-but-necessary conversations. 

"If it makes you feel any better, dis is my first since Lebanon," Remy offered, nevertheless putting the cigarette out. "'Sides, all those Shi'ar toys made me good as new."

It was almost true. The devices in Hank's chamber of horrors could probably bring back the dead. Actually might have done so, if Psylocke had been anywhere near as bad as she looked. But Remy had only let McCoy zap his lungs back to the pink of health. Once he was no longer coughing up blood, he had fled the med lab before anyone could get on him about the broken ribs. Everyone knew he was no fan of the med lab and had let him slide. Everyone, it seemed, except Bobby. 

"Then how come your ribs are still taped up, huh?" The man in question asked. "And why are you flopped out here in the backyard instead of off on your bike?"

"Cluck, cluck, cluck. You a regular mother hen, y'know dat," Remy ground out (without any real anger) as he tried to sit up, then thought better of it. 

"And you're a self-destructive pain in the ass," Bobby replied as he sat down in one of the chairs next to Remy and sighed heavily. 

"T'be honest, why do you care?" 

The sun was hiding behind the high clouds for a moment, so Remy took off his dark glasses and gave Bobby a scrutinizing glance. Remy had always assumed that the joking that went on between the two of them had been Bobby's usual cheer - Bobby would crack jokes with anyone, Remy just happened to be a convenient foil. It hadn't ever crossed his mind that Bobby had put any consideration into the matter. 

"In theory, because you are my teammate and as such, I'd prefer it that you were in one piece," Bobby said. He didn't know whether or not to meet Remy's penetrating-but-curious stare. "In practice, because it disturbs me to watch you try to pay off a debt that you don't owe."

"You don't know, Drake...," Remy began, rolling his eyes in frustration. 

"What don't I know?" Bobby asked sharply, leaning forward so that his elbows rested on his knees. "I was in the tunnels after the Morlock Massacre. I saw what went on..."

"So what're..."

"Don't interrupt," Bobby cut him off with enough sharpness that Remy raised his eyebrows. Bobby looked at him challengingly. "I saw the Alley, and I saw Warren... and I also spent a lot of time with Rogue. I know."

"And?"

"And if you actually succeed in your quest for unnecessary martyrdom, neither of them will be able to live with themselves." Bobby looked absolutely serious as he spoke; the twinkle in his eyes that usually accompanied his deadpan routines was nowhere to be seen. 

"Getting yourself killed rescuing Betsy is not the way to make up with Warren," Bobby went on, then chuckled almost coldly at Remy's surprised expression. "What? You didn't think anyone would figure that one out? Cyke even got it, and we all know about Scott's time-delay mechanism when it comes to interpersonal relations. It was so not-subtle as to risk damaging your rep as the Super-Smooth One."

"'vrybody else was tryin' to get to Psylocke as well," Remy protested without conviction. 

"That may be," Bobby agreed, sitting up straight. "But Rogue's invulnerable, Mirrin teleports, and Wolverine's got a healing factor. What was your excuse?"

Remy didn't have one, so he kept quiet. 

Bobby paused a moment before continuing. "Not only would Warren not be able to live with himself knowing that you practically committed suicide to pay up a debt even he realizes (somewhere in his bird brain) you don't owe, but we wouldn't be able to live with him, either." 

Now, before he put his glasses on to deal with the re-emerging sun, Remy could see the change in Bobby's expression that foretold a joke. "I know you'll be dead and you won't care, but, well, since you're being so nice and catering to his needs, consider the rest of us as well. Please, please, _please_ don't make me have to go through Warren's self-flagellating phase again. It's _so_ not pretty to watch. And Rogue..."

"Yes?" Remy realized he had been grinning, but abruptly stopped when _that_ name was spoken.

A long sigh as Bobby noticed the other man's reaction. "Promise not to say anything? I mean really promise, not a 'sure, I won't go through your things when you're not looking' kind of thieves' promise," he said. Remy noted that the smirk was gone again, replaced by a questioning look. 

"Never gone through your stuff, Drake. Got nothing interesting." Remy shrugged as lightly as his healing ribs would allow.

"Then how do you know whether I've got anything interesting?"

"Thieves' sense. Now what's the secret I ain't supposed to be talking about?"

"How much do you remember after you got hurt in Lebanon?" Bobby asked, leaning forward in his chair. 

"Got blasted into a tree trunk, managed to pick off a few more of de bad guys, then they took out the building I was shootin' from," Remy replied as if he were giving a mission report. "Rest is kinda blurry 'til Henri's got Roguie holdin' me down to shoot me up wit' whatever he was shooting me up wit'."

"That was three days after you got back," Bobby told him. "You don't wonder why Rogue was around to keep you from killing Hank?"

"Wasn't thinkin' too clear at the time." Although now that he did think about it... 

"She didn't leave your side," Bobby replied. "Not from the minute she pulled you out of the rubble, according to Scott. Maybe Mirrin can give you a telepathic replay of the whole scene, but..."

"Was as there as I'd care to be," Remy said, waving his hand lightly. But his furrowed brow indicated something else going through his mind.

"She stayed in the med lab with you until Hank threatened to have Mirrin teleport her back to her room." Bobby shook his head remembering the scene. 

"S'how come she won't be in the same time zone wit' me since I've been conscious?"

"Rogue's got issues to consider right now," Bobby said after a moment of consideration. Remy was a concerned party, but Rogue had come to him in confidence and Bobby couldn't break that trust, even if it was for everyone's own good. "Joseph tried to reach her a few times while she was sitting with you. That's public record, so that's all you're getting from me."

Remy nodded. That was food enough for considerable thought. Not to mention considerable fantasy. 

"Which brings me to another point concerning your well-meaning-if-lunatic attempts to regain favor." Bobby's eyes twinkled as he spoke. "Our bouncing blue Beast would most definitely second my plea to keep yourself in one piece. Not only because he's the one who'll have to put you back together, but also after a week in the med lab with both Warren and Rogue hovering over his every move... you know that Onslaught program we have in the Danger Room?"

Remy nodded. 

"Hank is using it to relieve stress. By watching it, not participating in it. Lots and lots of little holographic X-Men are dying, Remy. And only you can save them. Think about that." 

With that, Bobby got up off his lounge chair and dusted himself off before walking back towards the house. 

And Remy was left with his thoughts. 

***

"Computer, freeze program."

In the Danger Room below, the scarred landscape and the cadre of Prime Sentinels suddenly disappeared and Sam Guthrie was left hovering in the middle of a blank room. The sense of danger didn't fade, just change. Domino wasn't one to stop programs in mid-course. 

"What'd Ah do wrong this time?" He blasted up to the control room window to find his former teacher standing hands-on-hips.

"What's the first rule of fighting solo, Sam?" Domino asked angrily as she indicated that he should come around to her side of the glass. 

"If you don't watch your back, nobody's gonna do it for you," he said in a monotone as he headed for the trap door that opened into the hallway next to the control room. A few moments later, he was sat heavily in one of the chairs before the console. "Ah thought Ah was doin' all right on that account."

"You're not thinking at all, Sam, that's the problem," Domino snapped. "Your brain has been excess baggage since you got back from Lebanon."

She hadn't meant to start off sounding so... waspish. But while it was one thing to be sulky and sullen during down time - hell, Nate had that down to an art - it was another to be distracted while fighting. And if she and Nathan had gotten anything through the X-Force kids' thick skulls, it was that you treated practice runs as seriously as you did the real thing. For Sam, of all people, to be so preoccupied... "I don't care if this unit treats Danger Room time like an hour at the gym. **You** know better..."

"And Ah still got the scars to prove it," he replied sullenly, giving Dom that duly chastened look that made most normal people immediate start to regret yelling at him in the first place. 

But Domino wasn't normal people. 

"Apparently, those scars have faded. For someone who's supposed to be almost invulnerable while blasting, you were approximately... thirty-eight seconds away from testing out just how many pieces you can be in before your ability to not stay dead craps out." She pointed to the appropriate monitor, which was still flashing red warning messages. 

Sam's shoulders sagged further, something Domino didn't think was anatomically possible. "Load 'er up again. Ah'll do better this time."

"No."

"Why not?" 

"Because you're not screwing up for lack of practice," Domino explained as she sat down in the other chair, elbows on knees. "You're screwing up because your mind is elsewhere. So there's no point in trying again until you find out wherever the hell it went and bring it back to the task at hand."

Sam looked at the floor balefully. 

"Spill, Guthrie. Before I have to use the bamboo."

He looked up at her and almost immediately wished he hadn't. Domino had only met his mother once or twice, but it had apparently been enough for her to pick up the Guthrie Stare of Truth Divination, or at least a real good approximation of it. With a sense of resignation that he hadn't felt since the last time he tried to blame Josh for stacking the firewood wrong, Sam knew he wasn't escaping. 

Domino watched Sam's posture go through about six different and equally eloquent positions and knew that she had broken him. So now it was just a matter of getting him to start talking. 

"I had been a merc for a year before I got my first kill job," she began after the silence grew heavy. "Up until then, it had just been simple sabotage and spy crap.

"Matteo Malpighi. He was an art dealer who had ripped off some bankers. The guy had a couple of real good bodyguards. Real good. I watched him for a week before I figured out where my best chance was... Guy had two bodyguards, but six kids. Every day, he'd come home to his villa and the kids would swamp him. Guards just couldn't stay close then."

Sam was watching her closely now. Domino rarely ever talked about life before X-Force, even around Cable. And _never_ spoke about herself like this. Sam wasn't sure whether to feel uncomfortable or honored that she did so now.

"The few people I hung with back then, they warned me about making sure I was ready," she went on. "But the money for S&D was - is - so much better than just blowing up secret hideouts or starting civil wars. And I was bored. And I was not going to let some old men steal my glory by making me think I was still a little kid who couldn't handle the big time.

"But I wasn't ready. I did the job - you blow an assassination contract, your life is forfeit - but I didn't take any jobs that promised a body count for months," Domino said, the distant look in her eyes disappearing as she locked glances with Sam. 

"You can be a cold-hearted merc or you can be a freedom fighter or you can be a simple peaceful citizen who just gets caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. But the first time you have to take somebody's life intentionally, it's going to get to you. The trick is coming to terms with it and learning to look yourself in the mirror again." 

Sam could only nod. That Domino - and undoubtedly Cable as well - should know what was bothering him really shouldn't have been a surprise. "Ah've killed people before, but..."

"But those were collateral damage. This was committing murder." She said the words knowing that they would make Sam cringe. And they did. "You thought you were ready."

"But Ah wasn't."

"I'll let you in on a little secret, Guthrie. Nobody ever is," she said gently. Then, smirking, she added, "At least nobody who doesn't later turn into a raving sociopath."

Sam gave a half-chuckle, but didn't say anything. 

"Look, if it makes you feel any better, killing is a lot like sex. It's only a raging disaster the first time. After that, you can deal with it, good or bad," Domino explained as she sat back. "Don't get all flustered at me, Guthrie. I know exactly how far that innocent farm boy routine of yours goes - and doesn't go."

"Ah didn't say a thing," Sam said, shaking his head to hide his smile. Domino had always amazed him with her ability to go from concerned maternal figure (although heaven forbid she should ever hear the M word uttered in relation to herself) to... well, Domino, in the blink of an eye. 

He didn't think everything would be okay now, this wasn't a magic cure speech, but Sam now could accept the possibility that they could be. Which was also completely Domino. She wouldn't chase away your demons for you, but she'd get them moving so that you could finish the job on your own. In the meanwhile, she would slink away and then pretend she didn't know what the hell you were talking about when you tried to thank her. Cable did the same thing, which made it all the more odd that the only people they couldn't help were each other and themselves.

Satisfied that she had done more good for Sam than damage to herself by talking about her past, Domino left Sam to his thoughts for a few moments, busying herself by resetting the Danger Room computers and then scanning the program roster to see what else was available to play around with. She and Cable had run through a Madripoor program that just had to be Logan's, but there were some other tempting ideas on the list. 

"Uh, Domino, would you mind sittin' through one more run? Ah'd like to end on a high note, so to speak." He stood up and looked down at her. They met glances and he let out a tiny sigh of relief that whatever Domino was looking for in him, she apparently found. 

"Just watch your back this time, Guthrie. Else the only high note you're gonna be singing is soprano."

***

http://www.geocities.com/nikimarzione/ 


	13. FP 13: Peacemakers and Truthtellers

Future Pluperfect: Chapter 13 

* * *

Textual Poaching Alert: Marvel owns everyone but Mirrin, although Social Services would have stripped custody long ago...

* * *

"Where are you going?"

"Out," Domino replied, a little less smoothly than she intended as she pushed off of the kitchen doorway. She really hadn't thought Nathan would ask. "I'll be back later. You know how to find me."

Nathan just glared at her, which, come to think of it, was about all he had done since that morning, when Domino had suggested that he and Mirrin spend some quality time together. Even though she had been careful to wait until fifteen minutes after he had finished his coffee. 

"She's supposed to be one of your oldest friends, right," Domino had pointed out to him. "Yet you keep her up in Westchester and you hide down here. You're not inspiring a lot of trust in her, Nate."

"She's used to that." He had half-shrugged. The physical reaction had been studied casual, but Domino couldn't help but catch the flash of guilt that Nathan had tried to keep away from the psi-link. 

"It's time to stop taking your guilt out on Mirrin, Nate," she had said. "She's not dead yet. Even if it wasn't completely obvious that you've been avoiding her ever since she got here... And don't give me that crap about the two of you having a self-sufficient kind of friendship - if someone I thought I'd never see again popped up on my doorstep, _especially_ if I thought that they were dead, even _I_ would try to spend a little time with them." She had been thinking of both Milo and Theo when she spoke and knew that even if Nate couldn't see who, he'd feel something on the link. 

He had said nothing in response and she had puttered about the kitchen cleaning up for a while, waiting for the grudgingly given response that would either be a confession or a start of a fight - and after cleaning all of the breakfast dishes instead of putting them in the dishwasher, Domino had been ready for either. But Nathan had instead finished his bagel and gone off to the bank of monitors and computers in the other room without another word. 

She had followed. "Speaking to your metal half, since the human one obviously isn't listening, you're putting us all at risk." _That_ had gotten him to wheel around and face her. "Right now, you two are running on parallel tracks. And since neither of you really feel the need to let the rest of us in on your plans, that's an extra set of secrets to go around. And that's dangerous, Nate.

"At best, the two of you get all mysterious and figure out some plan to stop this fucking Kurioon so that we can all go back to our real lives. At worst, you get her to stop using Sam because you're not around. Don't give me that surprised look. She's playing on Sam's loyalty to you, Nate. She may prefer to jerk you around, but she's not above seeking a substitute."

There had been a long silence then, punctuated only by angry keystrokes on the computer keyboard and the belching of the printer. After a few minutes had gone by without even a whisper on the psi-link - Nathan was blocking her totally - Domino had grabbed her jacket and the keys Nathan had given her. And with only that four-word delay by Nathan keeping her, she had marched out the door. 

After enough time had passed that he was sure Domino wouldn't be returning for any forgotten items, Nathan wandered back into the kitchen feeling only mildly guilty for having chased her away. Idly noticing that Dom had been pissed off enough to pour out the contents of his coffee cup and wash out the pot, he settled for a drink of water and headed up the stairs to the back room. 

This safehouse had once been a warehouse, and as such, was not much in the way of exterior architecture. But there were windows along the back wall, giant levered ones that, despite Blaquesmith's fervent opposition, Nathan had opted to spend time and energy securing rather than remove. 

Practical considerations had prevented anything useful being placed in the long room that was bordered by the windows, however, and in time the room had become (were Nathan honest) a bit of a luxury. It was generously apportioned in a fashion unlike the military bearing of the rest of the safehouse. Soft couches, beautiful rugs, lamps, and tapestries made for an almost exotic environment. It was not wasteful, Nathan had argued with Blaquesmith, because it served a function. The soldier with no reminders of life outside the war soon lost his edge. Blaquesmith had opted to make a snide remark about that particular lesson taking too long to sink in rather than continue the fight about security measures.

Of course, Nathan didn't entertain company here, so the room's primary function was that of a place of meditation. The room did project a feeling of calm; even Dom had been able to find some quiet here. And while Nathan could - and had - meditated almost anywhere, this was probably his favorite spot in this time to do so. It was the only place where he did not need to levitate to achieve the required state of tranquillity.

Settling down on one of the rugs, Nathan began the mantra to clear his mind. While the Askani had their own versions, he instead used a few lines from a children's song Redd had used to sing to him. Not that he'd confess that to anyone. As Nathan first established and then extended his consciousness in the astral plane, he quickly found who he was looking for. 

Nathan had never understood how Mirrin could find calm in creating such a complex place on the astral plane to meditate. Most telepaths built themselves some variation of a glass room, a place that could keep the consciousnesses of others out without feeling restricted. The rooms were usually decorated, not enough to distract, just enough to make it comfortable. During Onslaught, he had seen Xavier's Victorian study; Jean's was something closer to a rustic farmhouse; his own was a recreation of the very room his body was sitting in (or, really, the other way around); he hadn't dared ask anyone what Emma Frost's might look like. 

But Mirrin... Mirrin had created not a room, but a terrarium. There were tall purple mountains to border green meadows and blue streams and rainbows of flowers. Nathan had always found it all the more striking because he was quite sure that Mirrin had never really seen any of these things. (Although now that he had a greater understanding of the extent of her time traveling...) Mirrin's unit network had come from the Med-Asiatic Pact, a region rendered desert centuries before either of them had walked the planet. Even in the places where he had encountered her, first as children in the North Country with Redd and Slym and then in Ebonshire, there had been nothing so wondrous as a maple tree. And there had certainly been no such verdant valleys in any place the Clan Chosen had made camp. Nathan had often wondered if there were any such places left on the planet they had known. 

Feeling prickles as he passed through Mirrin's shields, Nathan looked around even as he saw in his peripheral vision the dark blue glow that was his hostess. A rather cherubic-looking squirrel ran by and Nathan had to sidestep him. He was still chuckling as he made his way to the bank of the stream where Mirrin, dressed in her clan's traditional costume and with neither a stitch of Askani detail nor a mark of Clan Chosen war paint in sight, lay on her back with her feet dangling in the rushing water. 

"You've been redecorating."

"Well, it did seem somewhat necessary," Mirrin didn't open her eyes as she spoke. "Now that I know what colors things actually are supposed to be, it would be a shame not to incorporate them. They are far nicer, I think."

Nathan grunted agreement as sat down next to her. In hindsight, the place had probably looked like one of those colorized movies Sam would periodically rant against - the sun too yellow, the blue sky too electric, the pink flowers too garish to be anything nature had ever intended. But it was an understandable mistake - by the thirty-eighth century, nature's intentions had long since fallen by the wayside. 

A familiar scent wafted gently on the breeze. "Since when do you like gardenias?" 

"Ororo has several. She's letting me keep one in my room. They smell nice." Mirrin opened her eyes and peered at Nathan. Whatever she saw, however, she didn't feel the need to comment on it.

They sat there for a while, not speaking. Mirrin periodically kicked her feet to splash the water and Nathan gave in to the urge to lay back next to her and watch the clouds pass through the (newly) pale-blue sky. It was nice, this, he had to admit to himself. Just the two of them, the way it had been too rarely even when they were both in their familiar time. 

Dressed as they were in 'casual' attire - not their usual choices for appearances on the astral plane - Nathan could feel Mirrin next to him and appreciate the moment. They lay there enjoying an artificial nature not as Askani Sister and Askani'Son, not as Clan Chosen leader and soldier, instead just as Min and Nate, troublemakers at large and telepaths on the prowl. When had it stopped being so simple? Had it ever been such? 

"Have you tried a sunrise or sunset yet?" Nathan asked idly. Mirrin's valley really didn't need darkness to thrive, no more than the plants needed rain or the trees a change of seasons. Mental constructs were nice that way. 

"Dawn was a little sloppy," Mirrin admitted with a kick of her feet in the stream. "Dusk really was nice. I'll have to show you later."

"No surprise about the dawn. You're not really a morning person. Between you and Aliya... what joys you two were whenever you had second watch," he chuckled, then grunted in protest when Mirrin hit him on the arm closest to her. "What was that for?"

Mirrin pulled her feet out of the stream as she rolled onto her side to frown at Nathan. "For not letting go." 

She'd been meaning to have this conversation with Nathan since her arrival here, been wishing that she could have had it in the time they had both had left - especially now that she saw how little her dear friend had recovered from the losses he had endured. Even this little opening was enough for her to start in. 

Nathan didn't even try to pretend to misunderstand. "It's hard, Min," he admitted after a long pause. "Especially since I'm not sure of the alternative."

"Living life for the present and the future instead of the past?" She snorted. "The horror..." Mirrin gave him that flat stare that she used whenever she was incredulous. Nathan knew it well. 

Back in the time she had left, Mirrin had had to watch her tongue for fear she would let slip information about the future that lay ahead of both of them. But here, now, with her future as Nathan's past, there was no such need for discretion. And she could finally give in to the urge to strangle the man so intent on strangling himself with his own grief. Should it get to that, of course. 

"What happens if I let go and there's nothing left? Of me, of her... of you." _There._ He had said it, even if he had done so in a way that it could be misinterpreted. And Nathan wished that she would misunderstand, for that would mean that she didn't know. 

"All these years and you haven't learned a flonqing thing," Mirrin sighed and leaned back. "Can you honestly imagine losing Aliya by thinking of her life without thinking of her death? How could you _ever_ forget her by making hers a happy memory instead of just another means to hurt yourself? I swear, Nat'an... Just because we're no longer with you in body doesn't mean that we're no longer with you in spirit."

Now it was Nathan's turn to eye his companion critically as he fought the catch in his throat. Did she know? And if so, how much did she know?

"I don't make every memory of the Clan Chosen a painful one," he said carefully. "I still remember that trip T and I made to Park Haven..."

"But Tetherblood's still alive in your timepath, Nate. And when he's not, you'll do the same thing to his memory as you've done to Aliya's. And to mine."

There was a long pause. The words may have been simple enough, but their meanings were not. And no matter how long each of the two had carried around the knowledge that they were now sharing, no matter how artlessly casual the words were spoken, to hear them aloud was painful for them both. Pretenses were comforts and the truths, once let loose, couldn't be hidden away. 

"How long have you known?" Nathan finally asked. 

"That I'm back from the dead as far as you're concerned?" Mirrin's voice was a whisper now, devoid of the buoyant confidence that she'd been using to banter with before. "Since before I came back. Although you were dropping heavy enough hints when you first saw me. You must have given poor Domino quite a headache."

"Before you came back... you know about how you're going to die and you still just...?" Nathan leaned back against the grass and sighed heavily. 

"And I still just live my life, Nat'an," she finished for him. "We're all going to die. And I don't know when or how. Just why, which is already too much even if it's a reason I can live with. Or not live with, as the case may be... You've convinced yourself that you're going to die facing Apocalypse, there's really no difference between us."

Nathan pursed his lips in distaste. "How can you be so flip about it?"

"What are my choices, Nat'an?" Mirrin shook her head and gave him a sad smile. "I admit that I didn't take the news that I would not be living to my old age too well at first, but it's somewhat comforting to know I don't die eating bad meat or some other... graceless method. A warrior wants a brave and noble end, right?"

"You shouldn't have been a warrior, Min." 

"None of us should have been," she replied emphatically. "But what is, is."

There was a silence again. It had a different tension than before, the weight of the unspoken being replaced by the weight of knowledge now admitted. 

"That doesn't make it better. Knowing that you know," Nathan finally said. And it didn't. Ending up a martyr to the cause was one thing, even if - and Mirrin was right about him here - you had prepared yourself for the eventuality. But knowing that you were sending someone else off to their pre-appointed fate... "Why didn't you say anything?"

Mirrin chuckled humorlessly. "And make you even more miserable than you were already? It gutted me, Nate, to see you after Aliya died. More than you can know," she emphasized darkly. Nathan picked up his head to eye her closely, but her face was shuttered to him. "You gave up on living then. You existed, that's it. And maybe it's all that Askani training, but I didn't say anything because I didn't want you doing something... well, more stupid than you were doing already. You can go back to living from merely existing. But it requires a little more effort when you're starting from 'dead'."

There was nothing Nathan could say to that. 

"If it makes you feel better, I didn't just accept my fate like it was already writ. I did investigate the alternatives," Mirrin admitted wryly. "Some of the others were... unpleasant."

"Investigate... you're not... How'd you..." Nathan looked over at Mirrin, who was back to watching the clouds. 

"Some things I can't tell you even now, Nate."

He pounded the fist that (in the corporeal realm) was techno-organic steel against the ground. "Nothing that will allow me to do anything about it, you mean." 

Nathan would never accept that the Askani sisterhood felt that it could toss him around like a rag doll; that they took decisions out of his hands the way a parent extracted bone china from an infant's grasp. 

But what was normally a slow burn flared into a raging fire whenever it was thrown in his face that he wasn't the only one that they did this to. And that it was Mirrin who, despite her training and her mutant powers and her refusal to follow anyone's rules simply 'because', would end up being sacrificed to serve their aims... That she would _allow_ them to do it. Enable them...

"You know I would have come to you if I could have," Mirrin said quietly after letting Nathan seethe. "Flonq the Sisterhood, flonq the timestream, flonq it all... I would have run to you if I could have lived with the results... But trust me on this, Nat'an, I don't want you involved. My destiny, my choices."

"But..."

"But nothing. You're not the only who gets to keep their own counsel," she cut him off and gave him a meaningful look. "Now you know how the rest of us felt."

The clouds rolled by slowly, driven by some spectral breeze, and the air smelled faintly of gardenias and fresh grass. And Nathan wasn't quite sure how long the two of them had been lying there when Mirrin turned to him, that impish smile back in place, and asked him if he wanted to see her sunset now. 

"Do you remember that time when we crossed the Mao-Sino Province border. T-blood had that head cold?" Nathan asked as Mirrin concentrated on turning the horizon delicate shades of rose and fire.

"Remember?" Mirrin coughed out a laugh. "How could I forget? T was sniffling the entire time, Tyler was teething, and Hope was still mooning over whatever-his-name-was... It was probably our worst convoy ever. And the Canaanites got the province anyway... What made you bring _that_ adventure up?"

"The two of us snuck away that one time in the Mao Pass... We grabbed a skin of sour milk...," Nathan reminisced as the blue sky overhead faded into periwinkle edges.

"T's milk," Mirrin added with an amused snort. "We told him he wasn't going to be able to appreciate it if he couldn't unblock his nostrils..."

"And we ended up on that bluff..."

"...Watching the sunset," Mirrin finished. "At least until Aliya sent 'Silk up after us armed with a double-barrel plasma cannon... I think 'Silk was just upset that we didn't bring her with us."

"I don't think I've thought about that night... in years," Nathan admitted. 

"Afraid to remember everyone before they were... lost?"

A pause. "Probably."

They were quiet again, watching the sunset and then making it rise again. Nathan used some of his psionic energy to help Mirrin smooth out the dawn reds and eventually it was daylight again. 

"I used to wonder, you know," Mirrin said gently, as if she was reluctant to break the silence. "Who was better off: the ghosts or those who had to live with them?"

"Come to a decision?"

"No," she admitted. "But I'm starting to."

"Seeing me is making you decide that martyrdom isn't so bad?"

"No. Well, not like that," Mirrin hastily corrected with a sour tone as she turned to face Nathan. "I've never walked in your path. I don't know that I would do any better carrying your burden... I don't know. You're in your native time here-and-now, you've found your parents, you've got a woman who loves you..."

"Don't let Domino hear you say that, Min," Nathan warned. 

"It's true." 

"That almost doesn't matter," Nathan replied, reluctantly admitting the truth of it to himself. "It's... it's just not a place either of us are really comfortable being in."

"So you'd rather hold off, hoping that you'll both be proven wrong about the other," Mirrin laughed sadly. "There is something to be said for being on a tight schedule. No time for wasted opportunities."

That was a lesson he had learned too late and still ignored when convenient, Nathan mused. "Speaking of Domino, I suppose I should go look for her. We... had words. She was right and I was stubborn."

"Story of your life, Nat'an, story of your life," Mirrin replied, then rolled away as Nathan made a grab for her. "Be nice to her... I like her."

"You would," Nathan sighed as he stood up and stretched. 

Mirrin merely smiled innocently as she stood up next to him. Without a word, they started walking in the direction Nathan had come from, even though he could 'pop out' from anywhere. A habit from the corporeal world, Nathan thought. 

Nathan looked down at Mirrin and wrenched his face a little, scratching the back of his head in a delaying tactic he belatedly realized she'd recognize. "Min... thanks."

She took a step forward and hugged him. "Getting to kick you upside the head has been the highlight of my time here-and-now," she replied as she stepped back

He left Mirrin then, walking back through the valley in the direction he had come from however long ago. As the smell of gardenia and grass faded, a different smell replaced them. Jasmine tea. 

Opening his eyes, Nathan saw Domino sitting on one of the couches. She was holding a large Chinese mug, steam coming from the top. She was trying not to let on that she had been watching him, instead staring too intently at a book open on the couch next to her. Another Chinese mug, lid on, was sitting on the table closest to him. 

"You're back," Nathan said as he unfolded his legs and reached for the tea. 

"So are you," Domino replied. 

She had stopped being angry with Nathan by the time she had walked down to the Village, which was no short stroll. Checking out the record bins in the used music place on St. Mark's, she thought she was just giddy from finding the Ramones' first album (in great shape), but realized that it wasn't her who was so happy. And, well, since Nate being that tickled normally meant large quantities of explosives, she took the A back uptown. And found the big lug sitting peacefully on the red Persian rug, tears running down from one eye even as he looked so... beatific. It had been disconcerting. Which was why she had made tea. 

"Did you talk to her about Sam?" While getting the two warriors from the future to make peace was certainly high on the priority list, Domino had started the fight over Sam, so it was only fair that it ended over him as well. 

"I didn't have to," Nathan said as he re-covered his tea. "We sort of came to an understanding, of sorts." 

"Mm-hmm," was all Domino trusted herself to say. Not that she didn't think that Nate was telling the truth, just that... she strongly suspected Mirrin would find another loophole. "You two made peace, then." A statement, not a question. 

"More like we mutually agreed to stop tearing ourselves to shreds in private," he corrected with a shrug to indicate the difficulties of the situation. "She knows, Dom. She doesn't know the specifics, thank heavens for that, but... "

"Are you jealous?"

"Jealous of what? That she dies so young, or that she's basically functional despite the knowledge?" He stood up and stretched his legs, not knowing how long he had been meditating but judging it to be quite a while from the stiffness.

"Either one." This wasn't a flippant question for Domino. Ever since she had realized that Nate had slipped past her carefully constructed defenses and into her... affections, Domino had worried. Duty was duty, but there was a difference between not being afraid of death and welcoming it with open arms. 

"I'm not jealous. I'm disappointed, maybe," he admitted slowly. Reminding himself that there was nobody else to talk to about this and keeping it bottled up hadn't done him any good the past few decades. "I don't think Min's ever let me see just how deeply she follows the Askani teachings. I don't know if she's embarrassed or what, but... I'm not the only one with the martyr thing... I just that wish she knew better. She does about so much else..."

Domino stood up as well. She didn't want Nate falling into a funk again. Not when he had been so... at peace earlier. "You set a shitty example. What else is new?"

Nathan chuckled then, coughing out something like a 'heh' and then nodding slowly. "Nothing, as Min has seen fit to remind me. I am predictable in my old age."

"You didn't need to go to the astral plane for that."

* * *

http://www.geocities.com/nikimarzione/ 


	14. FP 14: Your Can Pick Your Friends, But N...

Future Pluperfect: Chapter 14 

* * *

Textual Poaching Alert: Marvel owns everyone, although Social Services would have stripped custody long ago...

* * *

_At last, a chance at some peace and quiet... well, maybe not peace and quiet, but at least I won't be at the epicenter of whatever happens..._ Rogue mused to herself as she settled down for her shift with a giant insulated mug of ice-cold Dr. Pepper and a bag of dried fruit. 

Monitor duty was normally a bore, even in times of crisis. Bobby and Hank had long ago installed a dedicated video game monitor - one that could not be seen by the video-phone camera used for official communications - and Rogue herself had helped Kitty and Illyana set up the satellite dish, but it was still a challenge to keep from dozing off. 

But today, such tedium would be welcome. For today had been anything but normal. Right from the get-go. 

It had started at breakfast. One of the few absolute certainties in the Xavier mansion, apart from the annual rebuilding, was that Rogue was down early for breakfast and that Remy was lucky to be seen before lunch. Even if Remy had a Danger Room appointment, he'd have his coffee in the prep room. 

But that morning, Rogue had been tucking into her eggs, bacon, sausage, and toast ("Ah'm sure mah partial invulnerability covers blocked arteries, Betsy, and no, Ah don't wanna know what's in that sausage.") when Remy had stumbled into the kitchen. 

To everyone else, he looked like death warmed over. But to Rogue, who had carried his broken body to the plane back in Lebanon the other week, he looked fine. Glowing, actually. Any condition that allowed him to walk around on his own two feet was an improvement. Not that she'd be admitting that to anyone. But to herself, when nobody could listen, she could breathe her sigh of relief. 

She had nearly choked on that sigh when she realized that the only conceivable place for Remy to sit in the kitchen was right next to her. Even allowing for Gambit's predilection for sitting on countertops, there was nowhere else to go. Alex and Scott, engaged in a none-too-benign sibling rivalry over the crossword puzzle, had the _Times_ spread out over Gambit's usual perch and were probably not inclined to move even had they noticed the press for space. Sam was sitting in front of the toaster with his Cheerios and Ororo was eating her fruit salad leaning against the refrigerator. Betsy, recently liberated from her bed-rest, was sitting next to Mirrin and across from Rogue. With Warren having just left for his office that left one empty chair that nobody else had taken. 

Remy had looked around the too-crowded kitchen and muttered something about there being only one kind of socializing one should be doing at this hour of the morning and this wasn't it, but only Wolverine and Rogue seemed to have heard as the former chuckled and the latter blushed. Remy didn't blush, but he did look a little embarrassed when he realized right after the words had left his mouth that he would be sitting next to Rogue. 

Rogue had suddenly gotten self-conscious about her food, although she didn't know why. Remy had never seemed bothered by her appetite, never made any crack about her ability to pack food away like a truck driver being unladylike or unattractive in any way. Nevertheless, she chose not to defend her plate against scavengers (today named Logan and Alex) who came swooping in for sausages and bacon, surprising both men. 

Marveling at Rogue's newfound generosity, Alex (fresh from needling his brother about getting more of the clues in the puzzle, which had been entitled "Great Minds") had joked that he didn't have to feel envious of Wolverine's healing factor that morning because the fork marks in his hand from previous attempts had not yet healed. That had spawned yet another round of storytelling, something that seemed to happen with increasing frequency as the passage of time (and the current crisis) made the days of Australia and before seem almost halcyon.

Rogue, who normally didn't like such trips down memory lane, decided to get into the act, recalling a not-well-known incident involving Alex's attempts to sunbathe nude. Remy, quietly nursing his coffee and toast next to her, had only made a quiet (but meaningful) noise as Logan mused aloud about Rogue's uncanny ability to catch X-Men in states of undress. 

Rogue had been saved from the frying pan and dropped into the fire when Bobby had come into the kitchen to tell her that Joseph was on the phone. _That_ had been a conversation she had been meaning to avoid for a little while longer. 

Joseph had been in Chile, evacuating a village that had been classified as a possible target of the Kurioon. He had traveled up and down the Pacific coast in the weeks since he had left the team and had stumbled across almost a dozen sites that looked as if they had been visited by Harvesters but had not been reported. Combine that with the ever-growing tally of known sites and the words 'global holocaust' were seeming more and more appropriate. 

The conversation had been brief and it had been bitter. Joseph, obviously under stress from his task and from his recent experiences, had just as obviously been looking for a little more warmth and compassion than he got from Rogue. Rogue, for her part, had known that she was channeling her confusion and guilt over Remy into frustration with Joseph, but really didn't care. 

Rogue had told herself that if Joseph couldn't put up with her mood swings, then they had no future together anyway. But she knew then as she knew now that that wasn't it. More likely was that she was trying to drive Joseph away without getting the guilts about it. And she knew she was more than halfway to doing a real good job there. 

Joseph had been his usual understanding self when Rogue had cried over the phone to him that first night after Lebanon. It was natural, he had said, for Rogue's feelings of guilt (however justified they might be, Joseph never tread too heavily on that particular ground) to make Remy's current situation all the more painful. 

But a few days later, after Rogue had twice opted not to leave Remy's side to speak to Joseph - especially after he had made the effort to find the only publicly accessible vid-phone in all of Peru - he had been less understanding. The crux of Joseph's argument, Rogue had pieced together after the fact, was that while any change in Remy's condition could be immediately ascertainable, he (Joseph) was wandering around all by himself in unknown danger and Rogue just didn't seem that concerned for _his_ well-being. Rogue had figured that she had used most of her super-strength to keep herself from telling Joseph just how right he was. 

Instead, Rogue had simply responded that it was his own choice to go off on his own mission (she had called it a "personal crusade", much to his anger) and that there was nothing stopping him from flying back home. And from there, the conversation had degenerated into a screaming match about personal responsibility and self-importance and hadn't ended until Rogue had destroyed the phone by slamming it down on the receiver and had fled the mansion. Bobby had found her by the ravine in a relatively untouched corner of the estate grounds and had let her cry and scream at him for a few hours.

This morning, Joseph's mood hadn't improved by much, even if he had a better grip on his anger. About all they could agree on was that perhaps it would be better if they didn't speak until Joseph returned to Westchester, whenever that was ("If I return." "Oh, stop bein' melodramatic."), and then the two of them would have 'a Talk'. Rogue was not looking forward to that. 

***

"Sorry to interrupt your Pac-Man marathon, Rogue," Scott began dryly as he leaned against the doorway. "But we're going to have to use the video console for something slightly more entertaining." He looked around on the console. "Do you know where the contact list is? I don't think we have Genosha on speed dial."

Nathan and Mirrin had predicted a fishing village on the island's south coast as a probable target, so communication with Magneto was unavoidable. Scott had only been half-kidding when he suggested they draw straws to see who would place the call. 

"For the first time in recorded history, it's exactly where it's supposed to be," Rogue said, gesturing with her chin towards the corkboard as she rolled up the cord to the video game controller. "Ya want some company?"

"Having someone invulnerable next to me would probably decrease the odds of me jumping out of my skin when Magneto gives me his 'Me Master of Magnetism, You Magnet' look," Scott agreed readily, then flashed a grin after Rogue gave him a raised eyebrow. 

For most of the time that she had known the X-Men's field leader, Rogue had been accustomed to Scott as an introverted, pained man. What she would consider his 'happy periods' had come, for the most part, either before she had joined the team or after one of its various schisms. That Scott in fact had a wicked sense of humor and that his shielded eyes only added to his deadpan routine was something she still too often forgot. 

"That, and maybe seeing you will keep him on just this side of a homicidal rage," Scott added, trailing off as he realized that in light of her problems with Joseph that wouldn't be such a good thing to bring up. 

Scott spread out his notes and loaded the data off the disk Cable had given him onto the computer as Rogue set up the video-phone for the call to Genosha. He wanted to be prepared to mow Magneto down with facts before the man could summon enough bluster to blow him away. "The people of Genosha shouldn't have to suffer the blows of the Kurioon just because Magneto's their ruler," he had argued. Not that anyone had disagreed with him, more that nobody had wanted to deal with Magneto. _Well, you talked the talk, now it's time to walk the damned walk,_ Scott mused to himself. Sometimes, he really wished Storm would put up more of a fight about being his equal as team leader. 

"Dried fruit?" Rogue held the bag towards Scott, who took a handful. Rogue had to try not to laugh out loud as she watched Scott eat the mix in type order as he looked over his notes one last time. Especially because he seemed to be doing it unconsciously. First the raisins, then the coconut slivers, then the papaya bits, then the nuts, then the pineapple, and finally the banana chips and dried apple. 

"Well, it's now or never," Scott said with a sigh as he wiped his hands on his jeans. "Let's go get accused of impugning the sovereignty of Genosha."

Rogue hit the button to dial and they were soon greeted by the unfriendly face of the Acolyte (neither of them recognized him) who answered the phone at Magneto's palace. After a few minutes of posturing and a couple of threats, they were eventually patched through to Magneto's office. 

The conversation was just slightly less acrimonious than had been Rogue's earlier one with Joseph. Rogue herself kept mostly silent, letting Cyclops (and he was Cyke now, the emotionless, fearless X-Man, and not Scott) do most of the talking and shouting and only interrupted when it looked like Magneto might hang up on them. 

Magneto, as expected, wanted no help from the X-Men, going so far as to threaten attack on any who might venture within the boundaries of Genosha. Cyclops was brutally honest in his reaction - he didn't care; the X-Men were spread thin enough as it was - but he wanted to make sure that Magneto had at his disposal all of the information required for an adequate defense. 

In the end, nobody was happy. After chastising Rogue for attempting to use any lingering affection he had for her in order to bend him to the X-Men's will, Magneto had disconnected before Cyclops could verify that the files on the Kurioon (carefully cleansed by both Mirrin and Cable) he was transferring had come through and were understood. 

"AAARRGGHH!" Cyclops howled at the now-blank vid-phone screen. "Were it not for the innocents on that island, I'd be more than happy to let the Kurioon take over the whole bloody thing." After a moment, he stood up with a sigh. "Thank you for your help, Rogue. No matter what he said. I'm going to blow things up in the Danger Room now. Lots of things. Lots of big things." 

Rogue managed an understanding laugh as Scott headed out and unrolled the video game controller. But even after several games, Pac-Man was no longer able to distract her from the turmoil lurking just below the surface. Between Remy and Magnus and Joseph... for a girl who couldn't be in a _real_ (as far as she was concerned) relationship, she certainly seemed to be able to get her fill of the crap that went along with such ties. 

"This is _so_ not what Ah need," she groaned aloud. 

"Yeah it is," a voice from the doorway spoke up. "You're just supposed to grab the power pellet and then turn around and chase the ghosts, not continue to eat the filler dots... Or is something else bothering you and I've just been caught using my Summers Sonar - guaranteed to miss the obvious at fifteen paces - again?"

"Alex," Rogue chuckled despite herself, "You can be such a joy. Especially when you're bein' dense."

"Consider my lineage. If I wasn't a joy when I was being dense, I'd either be no fun at all or else I'd be Cable," the man in question replied blithely. "Or is that redundant?" He moved to sit down. "Wanna talk?"

Rogue sighed. Alex would undoubtedly be a good person to talk to - he was one half impartial observer and one half veteran of the personal problems inherent in dating a teammate. The question was really whether Rogue wanted to talk at all. She had tried to use Bobby as a sounding board, but while Drake was a great listener, Rogue had found that getting it out in the open didn't necessarily clarify things. 

"Ah don't even know where to begin," she finally sighed. 

"Well, you've got a few more minutes to think about it," Alex replied as his eyes went to the blinking light on the console. "We've got an incoming call from... Genosha."

"Oh Gawd.... Ah can't deal with Magnus again right now. Can you take this? Ah'll make it up to you..."

"No problemo. And no make-up required. I'll send up a flare when the coast is clear," Alex said, waving her away with one hand as the other reached for the button to connect the call. Rogue was clearly distraught and Alex watched her go, too agitated to pay much attention to where she was headed. "X-Men headquarters, Havok here." 

"Uh... Hi, Alex. I didn't realize you were back with the team..."

"Lorna," he managed to stutter out in surprise after a long moment. "Uh... It's just temporary. The same people going after your... compatriots... went after me."

"You're all right, obviously," Lorna Dane, a.k.a. Polaris, replied smoothly. If she was either surprised or concerned, she wasn't going to let on. 

"Yeah, it's turning out to be just another excuse for my brother to take out his family frustrations... but that's not why you called." _Especially since we've spoken precisely twice since you left me for the 'green and pleasant land' that is Genosha... not to mention for Magneto's side_.

"No, it isn't," she admitted. "Sco... Cyclops called before. That mysterious army... Kurioon?... is supposed to be visiting here in a while. Cyclops tried to warn Magneto, but he wasn't listening too well and I just want to double check all of the information that you guys sent over."

"Uh, yeah. But I'm probably not the person to talk to about that. Especially since the briefing notes aren't still here," Alex looked around as he spoke. "Let me see if I can't get Cyke... do you want to hang on, or should he call you back?"

"Ah can help," Rogue said from the doorway. "Ah was there for the original call. Hey, Polaris."

"Rogue," the green-haired woman replied by way of greeting. 

"Oh, hold on a sec, got another call," Rogue asked Polaris, then hit the Pause-Mute key. "Ah'm so sorry Alex. You were here bailin' me out and... no good deed goes unpunished 'round here."

Alex shrugged a little too casually. "Occupational hazard. Don't worry." 

Rogue smirked as she sat down and reconnected the call. "Sorry 'bout that, Polaris. Now whattya need ta know?"

"I'm going to go... it was good seeing you again," Alex kept his voice neutral as he spoke. 

"Same here." Lorna nodded, a sad smile on her face. 

Alex turned around and left before he could think too long on whether that was Lorna's 'miss-you' look or her 'you sad sack, you still haven't gotten over me, have you?' look...

*** 

"The knee bone's connected to the shin bone," Kitty Pryde sang to herself as she soldered the circuit board. "The shin bone's connected to the ankle bone..."

As was often the case, Kitty had lost track of time since she had been at her workbench. So she had been quite surprised to hear Moira's voice on the intercom calling her to dinner. She had been even more surprised to hear her stomach growl at the summons - she honestly didn't think it had been that long since lunch. 

After two weeks of constant tinkering, Kitty had, with some technical help from Brian and some brute strength from Piotr, broken the Harvester down into parts. Bit by bit, she was replicating the parts that had comprised the processor in an attempt to better understand the future-born technology. Even considering her experience with the Danger Room and its Shi'ar (and who knows what else) contraptions, the Harvester was proving ever the enigmatic puzzle. 

After wolfing down Kurt's stew, Kitty rebuffed Pete's offer of a night on the town (translation: a couple of pints down at the pub) in favor of returning to the lab. Something about the schematics of the processor was bothering her. It was as if it was familiar in some fashion, although Kitty had no idea how that might be. And staring blankly at the circuit board under her magnifying glass wasn't helping any. 

"Maybe I should have gone with Pete," she told Lockheed, who had followed her downstairs after the meal. The dragon just sniffed his disapproval, however, and Kitty chose to ignore the comment. 

Instead, she went over to the empty workbench in the corner and hopped up on it. Settling herself down, she tried to calm her thoughts as she had been once trained to do. That it had been done with evil intentions notwithstanding, being schooled in the ways of the ninja occasionally had its uses. More than occasionally, actually. 

Walking back through her memories, Kitty tried to find the place where she had previously encountered a similarly designed technology to the Harvester. It wasn't Widget, although there were other similarities...

BAMF!

With a cloud of sulfur that was quickly dispersed by the exhaust fans, Kurt Wagner appeared in the lab. 

"You know, Katchen, if you didn't want to see Wisdom, there were other ways to get rid of him than locking yourself down here," he began, then cut himself off as he watched the young woman sit motionless. 

Kitty opened her eyes. "Oh, this has nothing to do with Pete... I was just trying to remember something."

Lockheed meandered over and plopped himself down on Kurt's shoulder. In his tiny paws was an oddly-shaped piece of metal. "Hrmf?"

"You know, Herr Dragon, you should leave Brian's things alone," Kurt scolded. "He might have left that in a position that was important."

While Kitty had been working on the Harvester's brains, so to speak, Braddock, with help from Moira's anatomy books and a few old robot manuals had been playing with the body. The carcass had been laid out on a workbench in Brian's 'half' of the tech lab as if it were being prepared for embalming at a morgue, 

Lockheed snorted in derision. Braddock had been at his wit's end over the thing and had not been afraid to let the others know. 

"That's it! That's it!!" Kitty hopped off the table and ran over to Kurt and Lockheed. "You've done it, you two!!! That's what I was trying to think of!!"

Kurt could only stare at Kitty as she hugged him fiercely and gave Lockheed a kiss. 

"Not that I would in any way like to discourage the displays of affection by lovely, if otherwise spoken for, young women," Kurt finally spoke up. "But..."

"Two words: Dark Bamf," Kitty called over he shoulder as she raced back to her work table. 

"Two words I did not necessarily want to hear again," Kurt said and shuddered. Lockheed voiced his agreement. "But how...?"

"After that little accident," Kitty explained over her shoulder as she began to type furiously on her computer, "I spent a lot of time with the computer that monitored the structural integrity of the Danger Room. It shouldn't have allowed a pan-dimensional portal to open up right in the middle of the floor, right?"

"'Little accident', she calls it, Lockheed. A little accident." Kurt and the dragon exchanged disbelieving looks. Of course, it hadn't been Kitty who had been tossed from alternate universe to alternate universe... 

"Anyway," Kitty continued, ignoring the matching set of looks, "the circuitry of that computer and the circuitry of this motherboard are reminiscent of each other. I don't know why, especially since I had always assumed that the Danger Room was all Shi'ar, but maybe this can lead me to something. It's a breakthrough, at any rate."

"So shall we celebrate by forcing you to go outside and enjoy the fresh evening air," Kurt suggested, seconded by Lockheed. Both were concerned with just how much time Kitty had been spending in the lab of late. 

"It's Scotland, Kurt. I don't think that's either wise or possible," Kitty giggled. "But throw in an ice cream sundae and you've got a deal."

***

"I thought I'd find you here."

"I just needed a little quiet." Alex Summers hadn't bothered looking to see who was coming. They may have not spent much time together over the last twenty years, but he knew his brother's stride by its sound. And as far away from the main house as he was, there were very few people who'd come to find him. "Who'd you get to psi-scan for me?"

"Nobody. You haven't lived here for a while, but I haven't forgotten that you co-opted my favorite hiding spot," Scott replied as he sat down on the hill next to where his brother was lying on his back. He pulled his legs in so that he was sitting Indian-style.

"Since when was this your spot? I never saw you here." Alex had first stumbled across this gently rolling hill - on the other side of a bank of trees a couple of acres from the mansion - way back in the early days of the X-Men. Before Lorna had ever been anything other than the good-natured girl putting up with Bobby Drake's graceless advances. 

"I wasn't using it that much by the time you finished college," Scott explained and shrugged, his jacket rustling with the motion. Alex, of course, was in a t-shirt despite the cool night air. Perqs of being your own heater and all... "Besides, I didn't want to get your dander up once I realized where you were hiding out. You were a bit... sensitive about sharing things back then." 

"I was a bit sensitive about a lot of things back then," Alex sighed with a nod. "But being the kid brother of a superhero was probably not good on my tender ego." 

"Tender ego my ass," Scott snorted. "You had no problems swiping Bobby's girl."

"As Lorna would put it, she was nobody's girl. Least of all Drake's."

"To be blunt as only a Summers can," Scott began after a beat, "Is the fact that Lorna's not yours anymore either why you're out here? You got kinda quiet after that call from Genosha."

"In part," Alex allowed, "but it's more than just her. It's a bad case of déjà vu all over again."

"Huh?"

Alex ran his fingers through his hair before he answered. It wasn't as if he hadn't been pondering this all evening. It was just a matter of getting the words out right the first time. "It's before Dallas all over again. I'm back to the X-Men, Lorna's consorting with the enemy, and we're sitting there pretending nothing is wrong. Except this time I've been dragged back to the mansion instead of coming unannounced, Lorna's not possessed and is doing this of her own volition, and we both know that the sky is about to cave in. Last time, it was just a sneaking suspicion."

"Things turned out all right in the end, though, right?" Scott asked "At least for a while. After Inferno and the mess in Genosha and all that." Although now that he though about it, Scott realized that there was quite a bit of _all that_.

"I don't think I want to go through _all that_ again," Alex grumbled, echoing his brother's thoughts. "No, I *know* I don't want to go through _all that_ again. Not having to fight Malice-as-Lorna, not ending up as Madelyne's Goblin Prince, not being a Magistrate, not X-Factor... I was serious when I quit the hero business, Scott."

"Well, as soon as we get rid of this Kurioon, you can go back to communing with rocks, or whatever it is you do out there," Scott said as he leaned back on the hillside next to his brother. "It's not like the old days when it was us or no one. We've got more X-Men nowadays than we know what to do with. The good thing - probably the _only_ good thing - about the mansion getting blown up every summer is that we get chances to build bigger living quarters. I'm not going to pull a Xavier on you, 'Lex. I'll keep your phone number off of the emergency call-list."

"'Pull a Xavier'," Alex mused with a chuckle. "I'll hold you to that."

"Although if you change your mind, Jean did say you were looking very much like your old self out in Brazil..." It was a half-hearted statement, though. Scott didn't really expect Alex to change his mind after so many years. 

"I just decided that dealing with your son is a lot like dealing with Guido and acted accordingly, that's all."

"I think I should resent that, but I know better."

There was silence, then, with only a few intrepid crickets breaking in with their opinions. Scott took off his glasses and let his optic beams blast as he watched the stars. 

"I forget how much I miss seeing the sky at night. I mean, I can see it just fine with my glasses, but... I forget the sky is dark blue, not black. Not that I get that much time to lie around and stare at the sky."

"My brother the workaholic? Nahh," Alex scoffed. "You better cover up, though. We don't want any airliners coming in for a landing on Greymalkin Lane. It's a clear night; those beams of yours are probably visible from cruising altitude."

"Hah, hah," Scott mock-laughed, but closed his eyes and enjoyed the gentle breeze blowing over his face. 

Knowing he couldn't be seen, Alex gave Scott a careful look. Even in the dark, without the visor Alex could see his brother's face clearly, see the family resemblance in all of its fullness. And that was heartening in its own fashion. Scott was so different from him in so many ways that occasionally Alex had used to wonder if maybe they weren't related after all, instead wondering whether they just happened to be two mutants from the same orphanage in Nebraska and everyone just decided that the freaks would have to be related. Sinister had been living in the basement, after all. Anything was possible. 

But without anything to obscure Scott's features, Alex could see that they shared the same setting of their eyes, the same aspect of their brows... in short, they couldn't have been anything but brothers. 

After another few minutes, unaware of his brother's ruminations, Scott put his glasses back on with a sigh.

"So you were okay with Brazil?" Scott asked without turning to look at his brother. He could usually tell when Alex was lying just from his voice and wouldn't need to see Alex's tell-tale nibble on his bottom lip. "I mean, not that I didn't think you could handle it..."

"Oh, sure, you kept me on the sidelines for those missions just because you were _overstaffed_," Alex said sarcastically, but without any real edge. 

"I just wanted to make sure you weren't going to get killed, baby bro. I just wanted to make sure you weren't going to get killed."

After another long silence, Alex chuckled mirthlessly. "It doesn't go away, does it? You survive leading one of the teams once, you're never able to take a back seat again. I was telling people _what to do_ in Brazil, Scott. I, Alex-the-conscientious-objector, was giving orders. I _hate_ giving orders. Almost as much as I hate following them."

"I told you that you were a Summers. Fight as you may, you can't deny your heritage," Scott laughed heartily. "We're **born** to boss people around. Jean says it complements well with the Summers tendency to hide our feelings to the point of implosion." 

"Which explains why we're both naturally armed and Dad's a crack shooter, right? Get our aggressions out and all..."

"Pretty much."

The two lay there quietly for a while, just watching the stars. For both men, the stars made them think of their father and, in turn, of their family. 

"Scott, how much do you remember?" Alex turned his head to face his brother. 

Scott didn't say anything for a long few minutes. "Not much. I've a lousy long-term memory. Pretty much everything from before I got here is gone..." This wasn't a topic Scott was comfortable discussing. Both because it implied (he felt) a weakness in his leadership abilities and because, quite frankly, it hurt. But leave it up to his little brother to unerringly hone in on the sore spots, even unintentionally.

Alex rolled onto his side. That certainly wasn't the answer he was expecting "It's all gone? But you can identify pictures and stuff like that... You never forgot who I was..." 

"It's not amnesia, just a faulty memory. I can remember some things when I'm prompted, but I can't really come up with stuff on my own. If it's real important, I guess I could always get Jean or Charles to find it..."

"Why don't you get them to let you remember some of the good things? Like birthday parties or something," Alex suggested, ignoring for the moment his own loathing of mental manipulation. 

"Jean's offered," Scott admitted. "But... there's a reason all that stuff went missing in the first place, you know? Charles gave me articles to read years ago... The memory loss is a kind of coping mechanism. It's not some side effect of the brain damage. It's some wall I built somewhere in my subconscious to keep myself from hurting... keep myself sane, I guess. And if I start messing with it... I don't want any dams bursting."

Alex really didn't know what to say. He'd always suspected Scott was a control freak for a reason, but... this was his brother admitting to being human. Being scared of not being able to hold on, just like everyone else. And that wasn't something he was used to. It happened on occasion, and Alex was grateful, but that didn't make it any less... strange.

"So I could start telling all these stories about how I used to be better than you in everything when we were little and you wouldn't know," Alex mused. He was being silly, of course. He got the distinct impression that just now, Scott didn't want to talk about this any more. Not when there was a mission scheduled for the morning. 

"If you're going to make stuff up, it'll have to be a little bit more credible for it to work on me," Scott retorted, gratefully accepting the change in topic for what it was. "I'd remember something like that..."

"I'll work on it."

"You do that."

***

* * *

http://www.geocities.com/nikimarzione/ 


	15. FP 15: All Around the House

Future Pluperfect: Chapter 15 

* * *

Textual Poaching Alert: Marvel owns everyone, although Social Services would have stripped custody long ago...

* * *

"Good morning, dear Mirrin," Hank McCoy smiled cheerfully as the Askani made her way down the stairs towards the kitchen. "I trust your hours spent cradled in the arms of Morpheus passed undisturbed?"

Not fully awake, Mirrin could do nothing but stare confusedly at the blue-furred doctor. 

"Don't be mean to de lady, Henri," Remy chided lightly as he wandered by. "Parlez anglais pour elle, hein? 'Specially before she's had her coffee."

"Coffee," Mirrin repeated as she mustered a groggy version of what could only be described as a beatific grin. 

"Coffeepot's over here, Min," Jean called from the entrance to the dining room. "Kitchen's off-limits until the plumbers are done."

As if on cue, the sound of pipes being attacked with a wrench came from the kitchen. While neither messrs Lebeau nor Drake were accepting blame, the fact that several of the pipes were warped from extreme temperature changes was no doubt at least partially behind their structural failure at some point in the middle of the night. 

Blameless though he claimed to be, Bobby had not exactly put up a fuss at being asked (at five in the morning, by a very non-plussed Scott) to transport away the water that had flooded the kitchen. Still dressed only in his Felix the Cat pajama bottoms, he had evaporated the puddles and waited for Ororo's gentle breeze (she had been the one to discover the problem upon creeping down for an early morning snack) to sweep the clouds out the open window before returning to bed. 

Jean was already levitating a cup out of the kitchen cabinet by the time Mirrin made her way to the dining room, which had taken on a decidedly less formal air ever since it had become the mansion's temporary locus point. One end of the long table was covered in cereal boxes and stacks of bowls, spoons, napkins, and fruit while the other side had various newspapers strewn over it as people had been reading whilst they ate. The coffeepot was plugged in and resting on the breakfront and somebody (with handwriting quite similar to Scott's) had left a note that if anyone wanted hot water for tea, they should either wake Alex up or borrow Hank's Bunsen burner. Someone else had crossed out the latter suggestion.

Jean floated the coffee mug over to Mirrin with a smile. It was Nathan's mug, of course, a ridiculously large one that had started out as a father-son joke (Scott had dragged Jean all through the Cellar at Macy's until he found the biggest coffee mug they made) and had ended up being treated by Nate as one of Scott's better attempts at bonding. For practical purposes, the mug stayed at the mansion and the Summerses had often joked that Nathan only came to the mansion to visit it, not them. 

But with Cable and Domino off doing something somewhere, the mug was free for use by the other caffeine-happy warrior from the future. 

("No, Redd, I'm not telling you where and why... No, I'm not being secretive for the sake of being secretive... Because I don't want everyone getting sidetracked by a long, drawn-out debates on means versus ends, that's why... No, I wasn't referring to Scott... I have Dom... Actually, she's more than enough help, trust me... Yes, I'll be careful... No, I won't promise not to kill anyone... Oh. Well, it's not usually a joke coming from Westchester... No, I don't think you're all one homologous lump of pacifism... I will. You, too.") 

Mirrin's love of coffee was a source of great humor among the X-Men, all the more so because they could tease her about it in a way that they couldn't Cable. At least not without great risk of bodily harm or an invite to spar in the Danger Room, which amounted to the same thing. 

Mirrin did not volunteer information about the future she had come from and the X-Men, aware of its stark brutality, did not ask much. But when Mirrin had proven to be just as much an aficionado of fresh coffee as Nathan, someone had finally asked. She had explained to the curious that while coffee was indeed available in the future from which she and Cable had arrived, it had not survived the ages well. Coffee plants, like all other forms of life that managed to survive on a polluted planet, had had to mutate. And that meant, for both people and plants, toughening up.

The end result was that coffee had to be heavily processed in order to be ingestible (the acid content was poisonously high otherwise) and was acquired only in canisters containing as much artificial sweetener as dried coffee. But while nobody actually enjoyed the stuff, it was still consumed in great quantities. That it was now not only palatable but also enjoyable, Mirrin had explained, was something worthy of appreciation. Veneration, Warren had jokingly corrected.

"The workers in the kitchen are not... disturbed... by floating crockery?" Mirrin finally asked after she had taken a few sips of the steaming brew. For reasons identical to Cable's, Mirrin took her coffee black - milk was something to drink only when one was feeling either rebellious or dissolute. Hank, in his alter ego as the driven Doctor McCoy, had marveled at how Mirrin's bone density did not seem affected by a nearly calcium-free diet, something he had eventually attributed to simple evolution. 

Jean shrugged. "They won't remember anything that goes on around here."

"You'll tamper with their minds just to get them to repair the plumbing?"

"It's the only way we can get anyone out here in the first place," Jean sighed, frowning at Mirrin's arched eyebrows. Mirrin would never say anything if she found something hypocritical - say one of the X-Men doing something she herself had been treated badly because of - but she would take on this knowing expression that grated on Jean as much as Nathan's more vocal commentary. 

"The people in town may not know about the X-Men, but they do know about the freaks that live in the Xavier place. The plumbers will do their work, get paid, and remember nothing other than a routine call for a burst pipe."

Mirrin nodded, as there was nothing else to be said on the matter, and Jean was relieved. It might be a reversal of the discrimination she knew in her own time, but Mirrin had already come to terms with the hatred between mutants and humans. Instead, she drank her coffee and ate her fruit in silence as Jean returned to taking notes on an article.

All of a sudden, a rumble of thunder was audible, growing louder until it manifested itself in the form of Sam Guthrie blasting quite closely past one of the open windows. The muffled sounds of what was quite obviously Logan cursing a blue streak followed shortly thereafter.

"A few of the team took their practice session outdoors," Jean explained without looking up from the stack of journal articles and newspaper clippings she was reading through. She could sense Mirrin's wariness and concern just as she could feel the utter lack of remorse behind the telepathic apologies she had gotten from Sam and Logan after she had 'yelled' at them.

Mirrin got up from her seat - while her ability to read English was now almost perfected, that knowledge wouldn't help her utter lack of comprehension of the sports news in this time - and went to the window. She was careful, however, to leave one hand free in case she should need to activate the shield on her bracelet. 

"Do not ask a question to which you will not like the answer," Ororo was calling out to Remy as Mirrin poked her head out. "You are only inviting that which will displease you."

Looking around for the red-and-black-eyed man, Mirrin found him under a localized rain cloud some distance from the house. Hair plastered to his head like a helmet, Remy looked remarkably at peace. Although she could hear him cursing mildly in his patois, she could also 'hear' him think much kinder thoughts. To be the butt of a joke, even, was a sign of affection. And that affection was something that Remy eagerly sought out as both comfort and sign of acceptance. Mirrin had been careful to measure her distance from her former secret partner lest that acceptance be tainted by the suspicion that hung around her (still) like a heavy fog. She wanted honestly Remy to be happy and was pleased that he was so at this moment. 

The pleasure turned abruptly to surprise as Remy was scooped up from behind by Sam, who carried him over to a nearby lake and dropped him into it. 

"Well, if you're gonna be enjoyin' the rain shower, no such thing as too much of a good thing, right?" 

Remy emerged from the underneath the surface of the water with a sputter. "Watch it, pup," he warned as Sam came to ground at the lakeshore. "Laugh now, mais jus' remember dat timing is everything."

"What's tha... ulp?!?" Sam's words were cut off as he went crashing to the ground, Logan landing on his back and knocking the wind from his lungs. 

"'He who laughs last, laughs best' is what Gumbo's tryin' to tell ya," the short Canadian chortled as he moved to get up. Looking around for Ororo and finding her hovering in the air nearby, he nodded at the woman. "Looks like it just you and me left, 'Roro."

"Indeed, Logan," she answered with a smile as she picked delicately at the cuff of her shirt. "It is a shame our junior teammates were disqualified so quickly. If you would like, I shall close my eyes and count to ten to give you a head start through the trees."

"Who says I'm gonna let you chase me? I'm predator, not prey," he snarled, but not in a threatening manner. It was a simple statement, one that of all those present, Ororo best understood the truth of. 

"You are also earthbound, my friend," she pointed out as she came to ground on the other side of the lake from Logan. "So I shall even the odds. Now, you have ten seconds... Ten... Nine..."

With a growl at the impropriety of the situation, Logan took off in a dead run towards the trees. Ororo finished her count aloud, knowing her quarry could hear her, and began her chase afoot, leaving Remy and Sam. 

"Hey, pup, gimme a hand out," Remy muttered towards Sam as he waded to the water's edge. 

Sam braced himself carefully before he offered a hand. As predicted, Remy tried to pull the younger man into the water with him. As compensation, Sam blasted off into the air, dragging Remy with him by the hand. At the Cajun's indignant yelp, Sam chortled. "Ah got how many kid brothers and sisters? Can you even _imagine_ how many times that trick's been pulled in the lake next to the farm? Points for tryin', though."

"D'accord, d'accord. Land, s'il te plait," Remy sighed. "'Fore you take my shoulder out of its socket."

The two returned to the ground nearby the garage, where Hank was slowly backing a car out. 

"Ah, hello again, Remy. Good morning Master Guthrie," the blue-furred man greeted them cheerily. "I am off to town. Would either of you like anything from the grocery or the hardware store?"

Neither could think of anything, so McCoy took off and they returned towards the house. 

"Plumbers are still there," Remy sighed and frowned as they passed the truck. 

"Better take the front steps, then," Sam offered, gesturing with his head in the vector he was proposing. "Best bet is to wait 'til they're gone before you run into anyone. Out-of-sight, out-of-mind and all. Ah think Bobby's stayin' in his room until they're gone."

Remy chuckled. "Talkin' like de voice of experience in the field of punishment avoidance, neh? Sweet little farmboy's got a history we don't know 'bout?"

"Ya know about it. Ya call it X-Force," Sam answered with a grin. "Not like we actually ever got anything past Cable 'n' Domino, but they were a whole lot less likely to assign punishment practices if you weren't found in close proximity to the mess ya made."

Remy nodded understanding, even he couldn't quite wrap his mind around the way Sam was so utterly comfortable thinking of the prickly duo in anything close to parental terms. 

"Ah'm going back to see whether Ororo's found Logan yet," Sam said as he gestured with his chin back in the direction of the woods. 

Remy nodded again. "Jus' don't hover too close. I t'ink they got us tagged early 'cause they really just wanted to have a talk, compris?"

Sam grinned. This, too, was something he had picked up from X-Force. Of course, as 'Berto had been the unfortunate one to have to verify, when Cable and Domino had sent the children away early from a game of laser tag... more than just talking was occasionally involved. Not that he thought Logan and Ororo..."Ah'll keep a high altitude and move along if they're stayin' put."

"Good boy," Remy nodded as he headed up the marble steps leading to the front door. As he reached for the doorknob, he could hear Sam blast off. 

True to Remy's words, Sam found Ororo and Logan making their way through the woods at a distance from each other that was close enough to carry on a conversation, although the gap between them opened and closed with enough irregularity that Sam could see that they were still keeping up a very good pretense of the chase. 

Without slowing down, he made a right and headed in the direction that would ultimately lead to the Hudson River. Today was a good day for flying and Sam hadn't taken a true pleasure flight in a while. There were no missions scheduled for today, although one of the telepaths could undoubtedly find him should the plans change. 

Down on the ground below, Logan could hear Sam's blast field fade into the distance. Shifting his attention back to the scene in front of him, Logan made a sharp veer left and around a tree stump. They had dropped their banter in favor of more stealth, but Logan could hear the faint crackle of twigs as Ororo chased him. Although she sounded further away than she had been; that was cause enough for suspicion - she was too good to be lagging. Stopping suddenly, he waited and listened. 

Silence. 

Since the point of the exercise was pursuit, not surveillance, there was no reason for Ororo to have stopped when Logan did and that made him wary. Sniffing the air, he could only barely make out Ororo's scent. Walking quietly, Logan turned himself from prey back into predator. 

Could something have happened to Ororo? There were no other people-smells in the air, certainly not the plastic-carbonite stench of Kurioon, but it would be foolish to think that other harbingers of evil had taken a holiday just because there was a new dog in town. 

"Looking for me?" Ororo asked as she dropped from a nearby branch onto the ground behind Logan and tagged him on the shoulder.

"Good work, there, 'Ro," Logan chuckled. "Didn't smell a thing. How'd ya do it?" he asked as the two began their walk back to the mansion. 

"You took off for the woods on the assumption that I would outrun you in open ground," she began as she dusted off a few leaves from her clothing. "So it only made sense that you kept to the forest once you entered it and that meant doubling back as its end approached. As for masking my scent... A thief knows to stay upwind of the guard dogs. I agreed to stay on the ground, but I did not agree not to use my powers in other ways."

"True enough, true enough," he agreed, shaking his head at being outfoxed. It wasn't that he didn't think Ororo capable of it - hell, he knew she was capable of it - more that it was his own fault for underestimating her so. That had been a general problem of late, he mused to himself. And his good humor drained away. "Too bad we couldn't have kept upwind of the Kurioon yesterday."

"I do not think that that would have helped any, my friend," Ororo replied with a sigh. "Our only comfort is that we escaped without casualty."

It had been a short, brutal battle and had made up in ferocity what it lacked in form. Both teams had been present and that, Scott had agreed during the debriefing, was all that had kept Minot from becoming another Lebanon. The ratio of red-level soldiers to colorless had been double what it had been previously, but Forge's latest device made it possible to give warning when any of them faced imminent explosion. The structural damage to the city was substantial, even if no lives had been lost. 

"Small comfort, that," Logan said with a shake of his head. "Morale seems okay now, but that's more due to the hubbub over the busted pipes than anything else. We can't keep hoping Drake and Lebeau can keep up the USO routine. We need something a little more substantial."

"Perhaps Mirrin or Cable will be able to provide us with such substance."

"The one's only lookin' after the other," Logan frowned as he spoke, jogging to keep up with Ororo as she began to walk back towards the house. "Mirrin's prepared to throw the lot of us to the Kurioon if it keeps Cable alive. She's no better than Sinister like that."

"Don't be so harsh, Logan," Ororo chastised gently. "Mirrin's methods are... perhaps not as open as we would like, but she has done nothing but save lives while she has been with us."

"I'm not denyin' that she's done good, I'm just... suspicious. She's hiding too much information. From us, I can understand even if I don't like it. But she's hiding from Cable as well and she's supposed to be buddies with Twinkle Face. This ain't like Remy hidin' his past 'cause he's afraid of how everyone'll react," he said, waving aside Ororo's automatic reaction to defend her friend. "Gumbo's got a right to his privacy like everyone else. But Mirrin's hiding info on an opponent we aren't having too much success with on our own. She's hobbling the wrong team."

Ororo paused for a moment and pulled a twig out of her hair. "Are you sure that that is what she is keeping hidden from us?"

Logan stopped and looked at his teammate. "Whattya mean?"

"She comes from the future, as did Bishop. She is burdened by the knowledge that our future - her past - is full of dark and troubled times. Perhaps it is the simple weight of that knowledge that keeps her from appearing forthcoming?"

"If that were the case, she'd just be a better looking Cable. It's something else."

They had arrived at the edge of the woods. 

"Then we have no choice but to wait and hope that you are wrong, my friend," Ororo said. "And that if you are not, then that the price is not high."

"If I'm right, the price is coming out of her hide, 'Ro. I guarantee that." Logan gestured towards the house. "I'm gonna grab a smoke before I head inside. I'm assuming ya ain't gonna be joining me for that." He cracked a smile. Ororo would sooner smother her plants than sit willingly next to one of Logan's cigars. 

"You assume correctly. It was fun, Logan, we should do it again soon," Ororo laughed and took off into the air, heading directly for her open attic window. 

As Logan headed towards the back porch - and his stash of cigars he kept in a strongbox underneath one of the benches - he saw the plumbers packing up their truck. Jean stood nearby, presumably ready with the mindwipe. 

"What we have to do to get good help around here," Warren fairly hissed as he jogged up to Logan. 

"It's better than no workin' toilets," Logan replied with a shrug that nonetheless managed to convey a certain agreement. "You lose somebody? Two somebodies?"

Warren had gone off running with Betsy (who had been deemed ready for basic workouts, but no Danger Room sessions) and Scott more than an hour ago, yet he returned alone now. 

"Betsy got distracted by a garage sale and Scott peeled off by the hangar," the winged mutant explained. His wings fluttered as he rolled his eyes in bemused exasperation. 

"Garage sale? How does she find them all?"

"I'd say it was some kind of mutant power, but the normal women I've dated get the same way," Warren answered. "Of course, Betsy left me and Scott in the dust so she'd have enough of a workout by the time we passed the house on the return trip... I'm guessing it's safe to use the hot water again, I'm heading in to shower."

Logan chortled as the younger man headed towards the house. In the distance, he could see the hangar door open. 

Warren looked up to find that the hallway window he had left open was still open (in the good old days before separate dorms, Jean would always shut the window right after his departure; it had been a source of friction that was eliminated by Jean's current refusal to go into the men's side of the residence unless absolutely necessary and armed with Lysol) and flew up to the room that he kept for his visits to Westchester. 

During their run, Scott had asked Warren why he didn't give up the pretense and move his things to Betsy's room as that was where he spent most of his nights anyway. Warren had muttered something about closet space and not wanting to completely associate the X-Men with Betsy - he did come up to see his friends as well. Scott had wisely chosen not to pursue the topic. In truth, it probably had more to do with Warren not being sure that Betsy wanted that sort of commitment from him. 

Warren stopped by his room to grab his robe and nearly ran into Alex stumbling out of the shower. 

"'Bout time you got up, you bum," Warren snorted with playful disdain as he negotiated past the yawning man. 

"Hey, I'm a civilian, I can get up when I want," Alex replied with a groggy grin. "Besides, there was a Mel Brooks marathon on last night. Drake and I were up until three..."

"Aren't the two of you either too young or too old to be reliving your college years?" Warren called over the sound of the shower. 

"You're as young as you act," Alex called back. "Are the plumbers gone yet?"

"Yeah, tell Bobby it's safe to go downstairs," Warren answered with a chuckle. 

"Will do," Alex agreed as he left the bathroom. Passing by Bobby's door, he stopped and put his ear against it. He could hear the sound of the man inside snoring gently. "Get up, Drake!" Alex pounded on the door heavily. "Sentinels at six o'clock!"

There was a mild shout of surprise from inside the room, then a groan, and then a couple of words Alex _knew_ Bobby hadn't picked up watching Mel Brooks. With the sound of heavy footfalls coming towards the door, Alex beat a hasty retreat towards his own room and it was only years of training that gave him the instinct to duck at the faint sound of Bobby tossing something cold at him. The snowball hit him squarely in the lower back and he lost his balance, falling indelicately on his hind. 

"I knew you'd duck," Drake called over as he closed the door again. 

An appreciative chuckle from the top of the stairs made Alex face forward quickly. 

"Nice view there, Alex," Jean commented dryly. "Maybe I did marry the wrong brother."

Not even bothering to see how much was exposed, Alex grabbed for his towel and beamed at his sister-in-law. "Where's the can of air freshener, Jeannie? Thought you never left the main wing without it?"

"The windows are open and air is getting in; I figured it was a good day to live dangerously," Jean mock-sneered. "I was going to ask if Bobby's up yet, but the snowball answered the question. You could have melted it before it hit you, ya know."

"I opted for flight instead of fight," he answered primly. "Are you going to move now so I can get up?"

"I've already seen everything there is to see. No point in false modesty now," Jean pointed out, green eyes dancing. 

"Humor me."

"Don't I always?" she asked as she daintily stepped over Alex's legs and went to Bobby's door. "Oh, Bobby," she sang out. 

"Bobby's not home right now. If you'd like to leave a message at the sound of the beep..."

"You have five minutes to get downstairs, Drake. Rogue's in a bad mood and needs a partner in the Danger Room," Jean announced, dropping the saccharine tone in favor of a more wicked one. 

The door opened suddenly. "The mostly-invulnerable woman wants to break things and _I_ get sacrificial lamb duty? How's that work?" Bobby poked his head out of the doorway. 

"Well, you _are_ her friend, Bobby," Jean reasoned, her voice taking on a color that Alex, watching from his own doorway, had always identified with Madelyne rather than Jean. He could almost envision the wicked gleam in her eyes. "Besides, nobody will be able to show you the plumbing bill if you're in the Danger Room."

"Or the med lab," Bobby answered easily. "Tell Rogue I'll be down in five."

"Will do," Jean called over her shoulder as she headed towards the stairs, passing by Alex and giving him a saucy wink. 

She had almost reached the bottom when a searing pain shot across her brain. 

A heartbeat later, Mirrin was at her side, a similar expression of pain and worry on her face instead of her normally guarded look of calm. 

Two heartbeats later, the alarm sounded. 

Three heartbeats later, Mirrin had them both in the monitor room, where Remy, hair still dripping from his shower, sat with red-and-black eyes wide and brow furrowed in concern as he pushed buttons and ran a system check. 

"Dere musta been a hangup with the satellite," he said, not turning around as he concentrated on the console. "Message is time-stamped five hours ago, but it's coming in now..."

Domino's voice, raw from shouting, filled the room specially built for surround-sound. 

"Westchester, can you read?... We have a situation here... Damnit, people, where _**are**_ you?... We have one down, one wounded and we're getting overrun... I'm cutting comm. so they don't trace... If you hear this, you'll know where to find the bodies..."

***

http://www.geocities.com/nikimarzione/ 


	16. FP 16: Before You Walk The Path...

Future Pluperfect: Chapter 16 

* * *

Textual Poaching Alert: Marvel owns everyone but Mirrin, although Social Services would have stripped custody long ago...

* * *

"Westchester, can you read?... We have a situation here... Damnit, people, where _are_ you?... We have one down, one wounded and we're getting overrun... I'm cutting comm. so they don't trace... If you hear this, you'll know where to find the bodies..."

The message had been played over and over again as more of the X-Men filed into the conference room. Even though he knew it was impossible, Remy was sure that Domino had gotten a little more exhausted, a little more frustrated with each time her call for help rang out through the room. 

Looking around the room, Remy could sense the mixture of guilt and concern mirrored in the faces of his teammates. Sure, they had all been quick to point out that it was all Cable and Domino's fault that they had run off on their own, no back-up, no message, no nothing. But that prim 'told-you-so'-ness had folded neatly in the face of the consequences of the results of those actions. Few of the team liked Cable, and Domino didn't even have that extra little buffer of being Scott's fate-tossed son, but there was nobody wearing an X who could imagine wanting _this_ for the pair of mercenaries-turned-reluctant-heroes. Even if they didn't quite know what _this_ was, or whether death the best or the worst option open to them. 

Remy's eyes fell on Sam Guthrie, sitting eerily still on a table in the back of the room. Sam was normally a study of matter in motion. Consciously or not, the polite Kentuckian was never at rest, be it his child-like fidgeting during too-long meetings or his startlingly predatory stealth while in the field. Remy, trained from a young age to be ever watchful of all motion, had early on learned to tune out Cannonball's kinetic impulse as a kind of white noise. But that faint buzz was gone now and the stillness was jarring. Sam sat statue-like, his long legs dangling off the edge of the auxiliary table without even the hint of a kick. 

From his seat at the conference table, Alex also watched Sam. _Poor kid's trying so hard to be cool about this. He's scared shitless and doesn't want anyone to know..._ Alex turned his head as his brother entered the room carrying a pile of papers. "Any word?"

Scott shook his head without making a sound, although Alex could tell from the tightness around Scott's mouth just how hard his brother was trying to remain calm. It was one thing to know that your son (however old, however grizzled) was off doing something stupid and foolish. It was another to be confronted with the proof that you were correct in worrying about him in the first place. 

The large, flat-screen monitor hung from the wall came to life and Kitty Pryde's face appeared. 

"The transmission came from the northernmost of the Torres Islands," she announced without preamble. "I'm transmitting coordinates now." The screen split in two, the right side becoming a map. 

"Where _is_ that?" Bobby Drake squinted at the dots on the screen. 

"West of the Fiji Islands, east of New Guinea and Australia... not near anything in particular," Kitty replied, sounding an awful lot as if she had asked that very question herself and was repeating the answers she had found. "Part of the Vanuatu islands, but not one of the ones they open to tourists and trade."

"Has there been any more communication from there, a beacon, a homing device, a radio..." Wolverine asked, making like he was ready to stand up and leave for Vanuatu as soon as he heard the answer. 

"Not a beep. But that doesn't mean anything. If Domino cut communications, then there shouldn't be. We're talking the very edge of civilization here," Kitty added, her lips pursed in something between frustration and dismay. "Piotr spent a lot of time with the atlas getting the damned coordinates in the first place. None of the Torres Islands are hot spots. There shouldn't be any sort of noise for miles; you probably can't even pick up a radio station there without a short-wave."

"Is that why it took so long for the message to get through?" Rogue looked up from the printout being passed around the conference table. "Or was there even a delay? Could that have been a live feed?"

"The time-stamp is correct," Kitty confirmed, shaking her head. "But I haven't yet figured out why there was the delay in transmission. All of the satellites we mooch off of aren't been reporting problems... Have you guys tried anything with Cerebro?"

"Jean and Mirrin are in there now," Scott answered in a rough voice that caused more than a few of his teammates to look at him surreptitiously. "But I'm not holding out hope. Neither of them can sense Cable and both are linked to him in some fashion..."

"But they'd know if he was dead, right?" Alex asked, one eye on Sam. 

"Not necessarily," Betsy spoke up slowly. "Unless you're actually on the astral plane, there's no telepathic difference between death, really good psi shielding, and the effects of a knock on the head. The line goes quiet, but you may not know why."

"Jean and Mirrin both had that headache, right b'fore the alarm went off," Remy remembered aloud. "Mebbe..."

"Ah felt something, too," Sam said in a voice not much louder than a whisper. Everyone turned. "Just before the alarm sounded. Like a nail goin' into mah head. Then it was gone."

Scott nodded. "As did I. It was probably the same thing as Jean and Mirrin, but we're headblind."

"It could have been anything," Betsy emphasized. "Cable must have expended quite a bit of energy to reach so many people. But it was a directed utterance. I felt nothing, for instance. Remember that telepath on Genosha who died of the Legacy Virus the other year. Every other psi on the planet had a headache from the death throes. Nathan is a much more powerful telepath."

Hank walked into the room, glasses in hand. "Kitty, you should be getting a message from the Avengers in a moment. A long time ago, they... acquired access to a decommissioned spy satellite. Despite some amelioration, it is not nearly as precise as most of the current models, but..."

"Beggars can't be choosers, right? Ooooh, good, it's coming through," Kitty's voice resonated throughout the room. "Here, I'll give you Kurt while I play around." Nightcrawler's face filled the screen, a frown creasing his brow.

"The satellite shouldn't be in position for another six hours," Hank warned, "but that is quicker than we will be able to get there, so it will be advance information after a fashion."

"We have a quicker way," Wolverine barked, still not having sat down. "The Askani can 'port us there yesterday. We can stop Dorothy and the Tin Woodsman before they even get to Oz."

"Mirrin's teleportation works in a similar fashion to Kurt's," Ororo corrected gently. "She needs to see where she is going. As none of us have ever been to our destination, the best we could hope to achieve is for her to bring us to Australia or Madripoor or some other location that is familiar to us. But we would lose any such advantage in that we would have to procure transportation from there to Vanuatu, not to mention acquiring arms and supplies."

"The guns I think she could probably do, but I don't want Mirrin trying to teleport the Blackbird," Scott broke in reluctantly. It wasn't as if similar thoughts hadn't crossed his mind. They certainly had crossed Mirrin's - it had been all he could do to keep her from teleporting to Nathan already. "She may have a far greater capacity in terms of tonnage and distance than Kurt, but she's not Lila. We're going to need Mirrin to help us fight the Kurioon and find Nate; we can't risk incapacitating her just when we'll need her most."

Frustrated but unable to do anything but concede the point, Wolverine sat back down. "So what now?"

"Betsy? Could you come here, please?" Jean's voice came through on the intercom. "We need another telepath."

Psylocke stood up. "I'm coming," she affirmed, curiosity on her face. "What can I do that you and Mirrin cannot?"

"Anchor us," Jean's voice answered. 

With a shrug to the others, Betsy left the room and went around the corner after nodding at Cyclops' unspoken request to keep him updated. 

"We can't find either of them," Jean said as soon as Betsy was within earshot. "I can't even get a whisper with Cerebro. Mirrin is better versed with trying to find people on the astral plane, but she neither has the experience with Cerebro nor the time to learn its use," Jean explained as she patted the console. "We want to link and combine our strengths..."

"But you need a tether," Betsy finished. Unspoken was the knowledge that out of the three women, Psylocke was the least talented telepath. Jean had the greater pure power, Mirrin the broader base of skills (even considering her experiences as a servant of the Hand, Betsy didn't want to think of some of the things the Askani had used her mental powers towards accomplishing), but there was no shame in coming in third after the two. 

The three women sat on the floor in a close triangle with each finding a comfortable position, one that they'd likely be in for some time. Betsy looked each of the other women in the eyes, searching for the calm and acceptance that would be required for what they were about to try. Finding it, she closed her eyes and focused on establishing the link between them. 

When first they had met, Betsy had expected that Jean's shields would be similar (if more formidable) versions of her own in that they had both received training from Charles Xavier. But various adventures, not in the least Betsy's own after stepping through the Siege Perilous, had altered both sets of psionic defenses so that there was nothing beyond a vague resemblance. 

Even that suggestion of similarity had all but disappeared, however, after Jean had returned from her honeymoon in the distant future and Psylocke was quite sure that the changes had rendered Jean's mind all but inaccessible to those whom Jean did not want to admit. 

But today, as Betsy reached out towards the normally impervious walls of living flame, they parted at her touch and allowed the bright pink rope of psionic energy to not only pass through, but also to be doubled in girth by a matching rope of fire-colored strength.

_And that's for the easy part_, Betsy mused to herself. 

Extending her mind in another direction, Psylocke came across the gently blowing clouds that marked the start of Mirrin's mental shields. 'Like soap bubbles', Jean had explained the concentric spherical layers of swirling colors, but Betsy saw something else. During one of the X-Men's interstellar adventures, Betsy had looked out a viewer and seen the Earth with its cloud cover and that, if anything, was what Mirrin's shields made her think of. They looked harmless enough, but just as the Earth's atmosphere made unaided entry next to impossible, so were the Askani's shields. 

_The first time I tried this, back in the Ukraine, Mirrin nearly blew my head clean off_, Betsy remembered with a mental frown. 

#_But you are friend now, not foe._#

From Mirrin's end, Betsy could see tendrils of dark blue energy weaving themselves around and through her own threads of pink psionic energy, which had started to pulse and glow. In short order, the link was complete and the blue and pink ran evenly throughout its length. 

"Go with peace," Betsy spoke aloud. Mindlinks had always struck her as intensely spiritual moments - it was why she had usually opted to telepathically present herself 'outside' another person's consciousness - and it seemed the thing to say with two other minds so intimately attached. 

Mirrin said something in Askani, but opened her eyes as she could now feel Betsy's questioning look. "It means 'And return with hope.' It is the traditional Askani response..." her voice trailed off as she shrugged slightly, a little embarrassed. But Betsy could feel the warmth behind the sentiment. Linked to Mirrin as she was now, Psylocke couldn't help but see her differently than she had - even after the woman had saved her life - and made a mental note to think about it later. 

Jean, able to see things as an attached third party, kept her relief to herself - the lingering tension between the two women had been the cause of more than one conversation between her and Scott. After Lebanon, Betsy had been grateful, but politely so and Mirrin had refused to acknowledge anything more than duty done. It had not made things any less awkward. 

Now, Jean turned her attention to projecting herself onto the astral plane. The transition felt a bit like diving into cool, deep water. It had been a while since she had attempted this without aid of Cerebro and she chided herself gently that she had quite fallen out of practice. 

Feeling the gentle breeze that always seemed to be present on the astral plane, Jean opened mental 'eyes' that she had not realized that she had closed with the effort. The armor that did not weigh her down as it would have on the corporeal world was in place and she lifted her visor and tilted her helmet back slightly. 

She was standing on a hill, but that was merely a construct. Charles had taught her to create a corporeal-reminiscent starting point so that the shift between the two planes would not be so stark. Above her, looking much like the Northern Lights that she and Scott would often see from their home in Alaska, were the presences of every living being. Jean's telepathy would only let her see the human elements, although she knew that the plant and animal ones were there as well. 

"Shall we begin?" Mirrin asked from behind her. "Knowing Nathan, we should probably start in the most counter-intuitive direction."

Turning around, Jean found the young woman standing with arms outstretched in opposite directions and it was all that she could do not to double take. To cover her surprise, she nodded and started to follow Mirrin down the slope. 

A telepath's astral form was a reflection of how they saw themselves, although it was usually affected by the circumstances that required their presence in the first place - hence Jean's armor. To see someone on the astral plane, then, was to see inside their thoughts on a level that went beyond merely boring through someone's shields. It was a glimpse at their essence. 

The woman who walked next to Jean did not much resemble the warrior who had first presented herself carrying a bomb in a Central American jungle. But only on the surface, Jean realized. Instead, here was the physical embodiment of all of the principles that had guided Mirrin on that day and in the days since. 

Mirrin's hair, normally braided back in an efficient knot even in casual situations, fell in long curls held back only by a pair of Askani phoenix-shaped clips and her face bore the tattoos around the eye that marked her place in the Sisterhood as clearly as did the medallion around her neck. 

On the corporeal plane, Mirrin dressed either in her battle costume - a body suit that wouldn't have looked out of place on Rogue underneath body armor and a loose-fitting surcoat - or in Nate's old sweatshirt and similarly loose fitting bottoms. So Jean was surprised to see the young woman so elaborately dressed. Her current attire, Jean realized, was that of her native clan, a sari-like outfit with a flowing scarf and bare arms. In her corporeal form Mirrin studiously avoided showing any skin, so Jean did not know whether the intricate designs painted on both of her forearms were actually there. 

"You might remember that there is a tradition of war paint among my native clan," Mirrin said quietly and Jean looked up. She hadn't realized that she was staring. She made an apologetic face, but Mirrin shooed it away. "The blue is my own and the silver represents the Clan Chosen. They interlock," Mirrin explained as she traced the shapes on one forearm with her index finger, "to show that we may never be parted. Nathan thinks it overdramatic, so I usually wear sleeves when he's around."

"They are real, then?"

"Here, on the astral plane, they are real, as is my eye tattoo. Back there," Mirrin waved vaguely as she spoke, "I need to pass as other than what I am. My body is an intimate part of my disguise and I cannot do with it as I would wish."

Jean started at the last words and Mirrin gave a sort of understanding look that made Jean sure that the other woman meant what she said in more than one way. The Askani live but to serve. "But Rachel..."

"Even to hide scars telepathically, the way the Mother Askani did and the way Nathan does now, would be treading upon dangerous ground," Mirrin replied. "You walk mostly among the headblind here-and-now. In my time, most of my subterfuge takes place only among mutants."

Jean didn't realize that they had stopped walking, but they must have as they began to move forward again. After a few steps, the ground disappeared and they were floating gently on that ever-present breeze and Jean could feel the touch of the minds as they came into contact with her body. Thankfully, the armor protected both Jean and the presences that floated by, so she only felt the slight contact, not any information or emotion. Looking over, Jean could see that while Mirrin was exposed to the brightly colored ephemera, they did not seem to come into contact with her skin. 

"How...?"

"It is somehow inherent within me," Mirrin explained with a frown that said she really didn't know. "A side effect of my teleportation, I suspect, as I do my 'porting through this realm. Aliya once called it psionic insect repellent."

They moved along gently, wading through the light and hoping against hope that each golden flash would be the one.

"How do you want to search," Mirrin asked after a time. "We could listen and look for their signatures..."

"...But that didn't work with Cerebro and I don't think that our presences here would improve the results any," Jean finished ruefully. "If Nathan's alive, then he should be able to be seen, even if he's nulled out. Domino's headblind, so if she's nulled, then we're looking for a needle in a haystack." 

Through the link, Jean could see that Mirrin understood and was considering alternatives. An unconscious mind did not disappear from the astral plane, instead it lost its ability to respond to stimulus. Telepathy, even with Cerebro, was dependent on such stimuli. Such an affected mind would be invisible psionically, but could be seen from the astral plane itself if the searcher was present the way Jean and Mirrin were. Cable, as a telepath, would have a greater presence than would Domino even were his consciousness nulled.

"I can illuminate every consciousness I've touched since my arrival here-and-now," Mirrin began slowly, as if pondering the idea's worth. "There will be many extraneous ones called forth, plus the rest of the X-Men, but it would cut down the search further than if we searched blindly or if you tried an equivalent summoning. I have touched fewer people... If Nathan and Domino are null, they will be made apparent wherever they are, as opposed to answering the summons."

"Go for it." 

Mirrin closed her eyes and extended her arms and Jean could hear a vague whistle in the wind. Suddenly, certain colors brightened both close and on the horizon and came floating like ghosts towards the women. 

"I'll hold them, you search," Mirrin called over the whistle of approaching consciousnesses. 

Jean waded through the sea of minds, recognizing the familiar presences of her teammates and smiling gently at the red essence that was Scott and the silvery-gray of Ororo. But there was no violet and Nathan would have been impossible to miss from this closeness. Dispersing the consciousnesses like a school of fish, Jean raised herself up and looked on the horizon for any illuminations that had not answered Mirrin's beckoning call. There was nothing.

"You can let them go," Jean told Mirrin, her voice shaking slightly. "I didn't see them." 

"Death isn't the only possibility," Mirrin said softly as she opened her eyes. "In my time, there is psi-shielding that will mask a presence from even a summoning like the one I just performed. You could be looking right at the person and not sense them. The Canaanites used it in inhibitor bands and for some of their elite war units. It is not inconceivable that Nathan and Domino have been captured and thus bound."

"So how would we find them?" Jean asked. 

"The effect on the astral plane is to not only null the consciousness, but also to tie it to the spot where it was when it was captured. There is no other way to find them but to literally stumble across them."

"We are linked to each other even as we're linked to Psylocke," Jean mused, raising the wrist that wore the glowing pink bracelet that Betsy had used to manifest the psionic tether. "Splitting up is probably not the most efficient way of looking, but..."

"...We are rapidly running out of options," Mirrin agreed. 

Even for those whose vision was restricted to humans, the astral plane was a crowded place as every single being was represented. Part of a telepath's training then was to learn not only to shield against this sea of consciousness, but also to be able to more quickly find familiar minds. As training advanced, the sea became a background against which the familiar consciousnesses stood out. 

But even with Jean and Mirrin's combined training making the search much faster than for almost any other telepath other than Charles Xavier, there was no success. Jean found herself actively fighting a swell of agony as every alternative but one was being eliminated.

#I have found something,# Mirrin's voice echoed gently in Jean's ears. On the astral plane, telepathy was an external mode of communication. 

Following the link, Jean found Mirrin standing on one of the many solid objects that dotted the astral plane. She had never figured out what they were, but suspected that they were other telepaths' constructs, their own versions of the hill from which she herself had started. In this case, it was a simple black box. "What is this?"

"I don't know _what_, but this is _where_ Nathan and Domino's consciousnesses were several hours ago," Mirrin answered tightly. "I can still sense them."

Jean concentrated and after a moment could as well. Faintly, vaguely, and just as a residue, but definitely there. "What happened?" Whatever it was, it wasn't good.

"Let's find out," Mirrin replied as she fiddled with the pink bracelet that represented her link with Psylocke. The bracelet glowed angrily and Jean could feel distantly the mental effort Mirrin was expending to let Betsy know that the bracelet was being removed voluntarily. Finally, it came off and Mirrin placed it on the black box and then reached for Jean's bracelet.

"What are you doing?" Jean asked as she pulled her wrist away. 

"Setting a beacon. We are going to time walk back to when Nathan and Domino's consciousnesses were here and I need a way to get us back."

Jean still covered her bracelet with her other hand. "What if something happens to us while we're back in time? How will Betsy..."

"If we get into trouble, then I have to get us out of it," Mirrin answered shortly. "There won't be anything Psylocke can do. We are going to time travel without our bodies. We either return to them or they die. No mind, no body, no life."

Jean stared at Mirrin as the younger woman finished removing Psylocke's bracelet from her wrist. "There's no other way?"

"We've been here too long; I don't have the energy to do this by myself and have you tether me to this time."

"But what about going back to our bodies and time-ripping there and then returning here?" Jean wasn't afraid for herself, but she knew that Mirrin shared Nathan's unwillingness to search for safer alternatives once a possible solution to a difficult problem had presented itself. 

"We don't have the time," Mirrin repeated, a touch of irritation creeping into her voice. "Bright Lady knows where we are on the astral plane; it would take too long to find this spot again and the residue is fading quickly. It's been several hours." 

Jean said nothing, but must not have looked convinced enough as Mirrin's eyes flashed and she muttered something that sounded unpleasant. "The residue of Nathan's consciousness is splattered upon this surface," Mirrin said and pointed. "However he died, it was with enough strain to shatter his mind into shards. I have sworn my life for his. And now I need to swear yours. This is our _only_ chance to save them."

Jean stared mutely. It was no less than she expected, but it still hurt like hell. She closed her eyes for a long moment and only opened them when she felt Mirrin's arm on her shoulder. 

"We _will_ save them," the Askani woman spoke softly but fiercely. 

Jean took a deep breath. "Let's go, then," Jean answered back in a matching tone. 

"Time walking is an art learned relatively late in an Askani initiate's training," Mirrin began in an almost conversational tone as she reached for Jean's hands and closed her eyes. "Although the perils of it are impressed upon the students quite early on, for the obvious reasons. To attempt it without a beacon is suicide; to attempt it with a beacon is merely to forfeit claim upon your body. You may return, you may not."

Jean could feel the link between her and Mirrin burn and strengthen as the Askani spoke. 

"If it eases your concern, my teleportation gives us much greater odds of returning. I've done this more often than most who attempt it."

"It doesn't. Ease my concern, that is," Jean admitted with a rueful frown. "But I didn't save Nathan as a child in your time to let him die in ours. I can't do that to him. Or to Scott."

On the corporeal realm, Mirrin's teleportation had the effect of making the air shimmer. On the astral plane, that shimmer was accompanied by an incredible shock of pain. When Jean's ears finally stopped ringing, the first thing she heard was the sound of gunfire. And then the squawking of a bird. 

They were on a beach. Somewhere in the Vanuatu islands, if she had heard Hank's voice carry through the halls correctly. And less than a hundred yards away lay Cable and Domino. 

They were both still alive, but barely. Domino was bleeding profusely from what looked to be a bullet wound to the shoulder and she was cut and bruised all over. Cable was in no better shape, the dim glow of his eye and the claw-like shape of his techo-organic hand as good an indicator as anything else. 

"Can you 'port to them?" Jean asked Mirrin. 

"It would not do us any good," the Askani replied quietly. "We are here in spirit, not in the flesh."

"So how are we going to save them?" Jean fairly screamed as she wheeled on the other woman. 

"By making an effective evaluation of the situation so that we can bring a team in," Mirrin answered evenly. 

"So we sit here and watch them die?" Jean couldn't believe what she was hearing. 

"It would be better to watch their killers," Mirrin corrected flatly. Coldly. "So that we do not allow them a chance to succeed the second time around. I did not say that this would be either pleasant or easy, Redd. Just necessary."

Red-level soldiers, a half-dozen or so also surrounded Cable and Domino, all with weapons drawn. Another approached, but instead of a gun it carried a battle ax. The others made room for it to enter the circle and no sooner did it do so than the ax swung around and down. 

The lifeless head of Nathan Christopher Charles Summers rolled down the beach towards the water. 

Domino's scream was cut off by her choking, presumably on fluid in her lungs.

"Why didn't he stop the ax?" Jean asked after she stopped retching. Knowing that they would have a chance to undo this damage did not make watching the murder of the man she had raised as her son any easier. 

"He was using his telekinesis to hold Domino together," Mirrin answered after a moment, putting a hand on Jean's hunched-over back before her. Over her years, she had watched her family, her lover, her clansmen all be killed. Blood, especially the blood of a friend, was no strange sight to her. But this had gutted her to the core even as it firmed her resolve not to let it happen at all. "Domino now dies of her wounds."

After a few moments, the Kurioon soldiers began to march towards the trees that lined the beach. They left the corpses to bleed out into the sand. 

"Should we follow them?" Jean asked hoarsely as she stood up.

"We should, but we can't," Mirrin agreed. "We barely have enough energy to get us back to Psylocke's bracelets. She's going to have to bring us back from there. We saw the soldiers; we have enough information for now."

Jean was about to protest, but a wave of dizziness nearly knocked her over. Instead, she nodded weakly and reached for Mirrin's outstretched hands. 

With eyes closed, Jean couldn't see the air shimmer and after what she had just experienced, she really didn't care about the pain. Opening her eyes, she found herself back at the black box. She picked up one of the bracelets and reached for Mirrin, who looked as if she were about to faint. Squeezing the bracelet, she used what little mental strength she had left to call for Betsy. 

And then the world went dark. 

***

http://www.geocities.com/nikimarzione/ 


	17. FP 17: Father's Day

Future Pluperfect: Chapter 17 

* * *

Textual Poaching Alert: Marvel owns everyone but Mirrin, although Social Services would have stripped custody long ago...

* * *

Scott Summers choked down his food with the aid of a large glass of milk. He didn't want to eat, no more than he had wanted to sleep or wanted to do anything other than pack everyone into the Blackbird and set off for Vanuatu the minute Jean had explained her and Mirrin's adventure yesterday evening. 

He had been ready to go immediately, which was precisely why Jean had telepathically knocked him out after he had carried her back to their bedroom to recover from the effects of the mental travel. He had woken up an hour ago next to his wife, not at all pleased at her actions. 

Jean was in the shower now, getting ready for today the same way she would get ready for any other day. They had fought about that as well, right after he had yelled at her about slipping him a mental mickey. Jean had been unapologetic. She had pointed out that they were going to need Cyclops-the-leader to be at his best, which meant that Scott-the-man had to be reasonable. It had not been a good choice of words. 

Scott had replied (at a decibel level he only rarely reached when not in the field) that he was being nothing but reasonable. It was eminently reasonable for a man to grieve over the loss of his son and even more reasonable for a father to want to get started on saving his child as soon as possible. 

And there, hindsight-enabled Scott admitted, he had misstepped by implying that he had greater claim to Nathan than did Jean. No matter if it were true - and Scott didn't think it was, not after he walked out on Maddie and the baby - it was the absolute wrong thing to say considering how Jean had spent the previous afternoon. 

Jean hadn't said anything, but suddenly, Scott found himself hiding behind a tree next to a sunny beach. Jean made him watch their son's murder through her own eyes, made him feel the anguish she had felt and that had been magnified by the flash of self-hatred and pain that came through the link with Mirrin, made him taste the bile as she fell to her knees and retched until there was nothing but dry heaves. And then he felt the comfort that came from Mirrin's hand on her shoulder; it wasn't the warm touch of shared tragedy, but instead the cold promise of pain returned tenfold at the least. For a moment, Scott thought he felt Jean, in her rage, searching around for some way to access the power of the Dark Phoenix. 

That last bit Scott wasn't sure about and he certainly couldn't ask Jean now. Their telepathic link was shuttered - not closed, but just very quiet - and Scott knew that it would remain that way until he apologized. He was working his way up to that, starting with Jean's last pre-fight exhortation that he make sure he ate something. 

"Scott, a moment please."

He turned around from his plate to face Storm, glad for once that his glasses obscured most of the expression on his face and still wishing that it would have the same effect on some of the people who looked at him. He was tired of the pitying eyes, the wary concern, the need to be delicate around him that his teammates had suddenly discovered they possessed. Not that he expected any of that from Ororo, but she was the only one apart from Logan from whom he didn't. 

"Yes?"

"I would like to suggest that the two of us switch teams for this mission," she began. It was a tone Scott recognized as one where Ororo was sure that she was right, but wasn't about to force the issue should he prove unreceptive. It was a tone he had learned years ago to respect as one that required close listening and it was his reminder that as comfortable as Storm was deferring to his leadership, she was more than capable in her own right. 

"Why?" Not demanding, just curious. 

"It is inconceivable that either you or Jean would not be on the away team, so there will have to be some reorganization and this will minimize the feeling-out period," Storm explained as she sat down next to Scott. "Also, my team is fresher and less... battle fatigued. Your squad has faced two rough missions in a row and does not need a third. This will be the toughest challenge yet, I fear."

He nodded. It was something he had, in fact, been thinking about as he ate. He already had Mirrin, needed Jean, and would prefer to have Sam, but didn't know how to go about handling any sort of re-organization. It wasn't the bruised feelings he was worried about -- Scott honestly couldn't care less about egos right now. Instead, it was a matter of putting together a strong away team for this mission without leaving only a remnant of the necessary force behind should this suddenly become a two-front war. He wanted his son back, but it really wasn't fair to sacrifice a small country to do so. 

A swallow of milk before speaking. "You're right," he agreed. "Should we anticipate any complaints?"

Ororo gave him an imperious look. "There will be none." 

"The briefing's in fifteen minutes," Scott said after a moment. "I guess we'll be leaving right afterwards."

"I guess," Ororo agreed. 

Scott nodded and there was a long, not-uncomfortable silence.

"It doesn't get any easier, does it?"

Scott didn't even pretend to not know of what Ororo was speaking. "No. I've almost lost count of all the times I've thought I've lost him for good. On the moon, when his T-O has flared out of control, when we left the future... and that's not even counting all of the times he's gotten himself blown up, knocked out, captured, and who-knows-what-else done to him that he doesn't think I'd react well to knowing about so he doesn't tell me..." his voice trailed off into a sigh. "I think he tells Jean some things. She's less protective of him that way. It's usually the mother who's overprotective and the father who doesn't mind... Maybe it's the Phoenix thing. They can bond over a joint capacity for violence."

"Or perhaps, my friend, it is that he wants you to think well of him and tells you only that which he feels will accomplish that aim," Ororo said as she stood up. After letting Scott digest her words, she looked to the stairs. "I should go and look in on Mirrin."

"Is she still asleep?" Scott wouldn't be surprised if she was. Jean had been exhausted after they had returned from their adventures on the astral plane and she had told Scott that Mirrin had done much of the work. 

"No, she has been meditating amongst my orchids for the last hour or so," Ororo replied. She had already been awake when she heard the gentle knock on the door. Mirrin had tried to explain, but while her heavily accented English was perfectly fluent, she could not find the words. So instead she sent a simple mental image, one that was met by a knowing nod from Ororo and a sweeping gesture towards the greenhouse part of her attic loft. The young Askani - and she did look so frighteningly young as she knelt on the ground surrounded by grass and flora - did not look as though what peace she had achieved was easily won. "I do not think she is taking this as well as she is trying to make everyone believe."

A hollow laugh from the kitchen entrance drew both Scott's and Ororo's glances.

"I have failed to uphold the oath I took to my clan," Mirrin said quietly from the doorway. "I have failed to carry out the mission I had been fated to undertake since before my birth. And I have let my oldest, most precious friend be slaughtered by the very enemy I was sent here-and-now to stop. I have, through my own weakness, abrogated every single one of my responsibilities. Until Nathan and Domino live and breathe again, I stand before you as a failure to the Clan Chosen, the Askani Sisterhood, and the Dayspring Unit. Among my birth-clan, I would be thrice due for ritual suicide. All considering, I think I am taking things rather well."

"Don't talk like that, Min," Scott commanded gently. He may have been an abysmal failure when dealing with Jean, but if there was one thing he was good at, it was dealing with guilt over Nathan doing something dangerous. "Nate is who he is and Domino enables him in the same way you do. You were upset with him taking off without you until you found out what had happened to him." 

He shook off her burgeoning cry of protest. "'The why of any situation is secondary to the situation itself', right? The situation is that you were left behind, Mirrin, and that is going to be your chance at redemption. You would have gotten caught in the same trap he did and then there would have been nobody left here to go back in time to get you back."

Mirrin, looking chastened, nodded. 

"Mirrin, why don't you come with me downstairs," Ororo offered gently, holding out an arm. "I'll need your help setting up the computer recreations..."

Again, the young woman said nothing, but followed quickly behind as Storm swept gracefully into the hallway leading to the entrance to the underground complex.

"I think this is 'Ro's way of setting us up, don't you," Jean commented evenly as she entered the kitchen from the other doorway. 

"We promised to never to leave angry for a mission," Scott allowed, pushing away his plate, appetite gone. "She's just helping us keep it... I'm sorry, Jean. For what I said. I didn't mean it. At least not the way it came out."

Jean nodded and sighed. As a telepath, she had known from the outset that Scott hadn't meant to imply the things he did. And Scott knew that she knew as well. He also knew that that knowledge couldn't be taken for granted; he had to apologize just like anyone else would. It was something that they had come to a silent agreement upon early on in their relationship, something that was particular to Jean herself - the Phoenix entity had been content to telepathically pick up on Scott's remorse back when it had been impersonating Jean. 

"We were tired and stressed and _grieving_ and neither of us was thinking clearly," she agreed. "I shouldn't have made you see... that."

"I'm almost glad you did, in some perverse way," Scott shook his head as he spoke, not quite sure how to explain his feelings. "I missed Nate's birth... this isn't coming out right, either."

"He'll be all right, Scott." Jean walked over to where her husband was still seated on a tall stool by the island and hugged him from behind, resting her cheek against his shoulder blade. "He has to be. He's our kid, remember? Not even Apocalypse could keep him dead for long."

Scott turned slightly, waiting for Jean to loosen her grip on his midsection before turning completely into her embrace and resting his head on her shoulder. They stayed like that until the clatter of feet in the hallway grew to herd-like proportions, indicating that most of the team would be assembled for the briefing. 

"I keep telling myself that he'll be okay," Scott said as he stood up, dumping the remains of his sandwich into the trash and then dropping his plate and glass in the sink before turning back to Jean. "But we both know that one of these times, he's not going to be okay. He's not going to just 'get better'. What happens if this is it?"

"I don't think Mirrin will let it happen," Jean said after a long pause. "No matter the cost."

A sigh. "That's what I'm worried about."

The two exchanged a knowing look. What cost was too high to bring back their son? They both knew that they would have no problem laying down their own lives - what else was a parent for, even if the child had already lived twice their years - but it was not their place to ask their teammates to make a similar sacrifice. 

"You two coming?" Warren poked his head in the kitchen doorway. He had been waiting there a moment until he could find a less-than-awkward moment to interrupt. Deciding that one would not be forthcoming, he opted for the famed Worthington Bluster. It didn't fail him. 

Once assembled in the War Room, the briefing quickly became a discussion of attack strategies. As Storm had assured, there had been no quarrel with the suggestion that she and Cyclops switch teams. The shock of the deaths was somewhat dulled by both the fact that it was merely confirmation of an earlier suspicion as well as by the knowledge that time travel (and the X-Men's own uncanny resiliency) made it a possibly temporary condition. 

Mirrin had programmed a terrifyingly realistic re-enactment of Cable and Domino's final moments to better aid the planning. For all of Mirrin's unfamiliarity with the accoutrements of twentieth century life, it was a sharp reminder for most of the team to see how comfortable she was around the computer system. It shouldn't have been, they all realized, considering that their state-of-the-art technology was the equivalent of an abacus to her. But they had gotten accustomed to her perplexed expression when confronted with items like lawnmowers and pencils and the Rangers game on television and it was easier to think of her that way. Less frightening. 

"Are we going to be able to get much of a headstart on this?" Alex asked as the lights came back up. "Or do we have to pop back in time to when Mirrin and Jean showed up?"

"I could probably do any time that day," Mirrin answered slowly, as if she were doing the mental calculations as she spoke. "But we will have to arrive at that spot. At least initially."

"We'd best give ourselves as much time as possible," Scott suggested. "Presumably, Cable and Domino weren't there the whole time and we'll have to find them before they are captured. They had to have been there for a reason, however, and that's going to be the problem. I'd bet anything that we're going to be up against a whole lot more than just those guards," he pointed at the schematic on the screen. 

"If Dayspring was correct, it might be the nest of the Kurioon," Mirrin supplied. After he had left with Domino (and without telling her) Mirrin had broken into Cable's safehouse to try to ascertain where he and Domino had gone and why. It had been a childish act of jealousy (at being left behind) and anger (that he had knowingly dodged his 'bodyguard') at the time, but it had turned out to be a valuable experience in light of that which had come later. Mirrin had been shutting down Nathan's computer when she had felt his death.

"Nest? As in base of operations?" Bobby asked. 

"Not necessarily the base, but at the very least where they arrived here-and-now," Mirrin confirmed, squirming in her seat so that she was sitting on one leg. "A kernel doesn't just spontaneously start producing troops. There is a gestation period. For this reason, the kernels are planted in isolated areas so that they stand the greatest chance of going untouched until they are in production mode."

"Harvesters come first," Gambit half-asked, half-assumed. 

"The Harvesters are part of the self-extracting core. The first troops produced are the Colorless. But that is by-the-by to what we need to discuss now. We will be facing Red Levels at least, probably in greater numbers than we have previously been exposed to. Perhaps even an Orange Level prototype, depending on how quickly the Kurioon production has been advancing."

There was a murmur around the crowded room.

"But we have been largely successful in preventing mass amounts of energy collection," Storm pointed out. "Even assuming the mass amounts of unknown victims, there should not be as much... supply as there once was."

"The Kurioon has been created to adapt to such resource problems," Mirrin replied. "The longer a kernel is active, the less energy it requires to produce that which it needs."

"Grand," Hank sighed. "Our adversaries not only have the advantage of strength, numbers, and weaponry, but they are also increasingly energy efficient. The first three can be overcome with ingenuity, but that last one..."

"We're going to be doing a lot of doing-over," Psylocke finished. 

If anyone were waiting for Mirrin to contradict the dire prediction, they would have been sadly disappointed. 

"A question, Mirrin," Rogue spoke up. "If this spot is the nest, why can't ya just pop back in time and destroy it before it does anything?"

"Were that possible, I never would have been forced to involve any of you in this war," the Askani answered. "Even were I to find out when the kernel arrived here-and-now, I would not attempt to disarm it. The effects would be on a level that is too high to be acceptable."

"Too high considering how many hundreds have already died?" Warren asked in frank disbelief. "I don't even _pretend_ to understand 'ripples in the time stream' and even I know that we've already altered the course of the future in a major way. Probably not for the good, either."

"Probably not," Mirrin agreed. "But the alternative is not a viable one. The Canaanites learn from their mistakes, so the Kurioon is armed against temporal defenses. According to the last records for an attempt to defuse a kernel, the reactors used to power the self-extracting core can be automatically reconfigured to present itself as a therm cluster."

"A self-destruct sequence," Wolverine elaborated. "Blow up whatever tried to stop it. But we've disabled unstable reactors before. Right, Alex?"

Havok nodded. India had not been high on his list of escapades he'd like to put on his résumé, but it had ended without explosion. Just a dead lover and the remnants of plague in his system.

"This isn't merely a power plant rendered dangerous, Wolverine. This is thermonuclear holocaust. A dozen Havoks could not absorb or channel the energy. This one," she pointed to Alex as she spoke, "would be vaporized along with anything in a hundred kilometer radius, at the least."

Alex tried to smile prettily, but suspected he looked a little deranged and stopped. "So we do things the hard way, then."

Two hours later, the plans for the rescue were as final as they were going to be without anyone stepping foot into the theatre of battle. Storm's new team would stay on alert, prepared to be whisked in by Mirrin as a second flank should it prove necessary. As Cyclops turned the projector off, he looked around the table at his teammates.

"Alright people, anything else?"

"Actually, I'd like to ask you something," Warren spoke up. "I'd like Sam to take my place on the mission."

Sam, who had been covering up his disappointment at not being able to accompany the away team by taking a deep interest in the papers handed out during the briefing, felt everyone's eyes upon him and tried to ignore the stares.

"Before you say anything, Scott, hear me out," Warren continued, putting up his hands in a supplicating gesture. "I may be one of the more senior X-Men, but there isn't anybody here who'd argue that Sam's better equipped for what you have planned. Lebanon proved that. For better or worse, Nathan and Domino have made sure that he's used to running through jungles chasing down enemies that outnumber him. I'm used to more metaphorical jungles, especially recently. 

"Let's be honest here. There's a good chance that a lot of the principles Professor Xavier raised us to hold most dear are going to be blown by the wayside off in Vanuatu," he went on, not letting Scott (or Sam, who looked like he was about to lodge some sort of protest) get a word in edgewise. Worthington Bluster was most effective here, around a conference table, before spectators. "And, well, Sam's used to not playing by those rules. We can both fly, but Cannonball can do a lot more. And you're going to need more. More than I can give you, most likely."

There was silence for a long moment as Warren watched one of his oldest friends consider his words. Scott was going to be absolutely logical about this, he knew, and wouldn't care whether he hurt either Warren's feelings by agreeing with him or Sam's for turning down the request. 

At the other end of the table Sam held his breath, not sure whether to protest Warren's claims of unworthiness or pray that Cyclops took them to heart. Sam wanted nothing more than to go on this mission, but if the away team was going to consist of almost all of the most veteran members of Xavier's group, he didn't see whom he could suggest to replace. 

"Cannonball, you have fifteen minutes to pack your gear," Cyclops told the younger man and then turned to leave the room.

Ten minutes later, with the maps printed out, the data loaded into portable data stores and a mini-Cerebro fitted with both Domino and Cable's signatures, the away team members were making their way towards the Blackbird. 

"Wait up a second," Warren called out from behind Cyclops. He waited for the other man to turn and walk back towards him. "I just wanted to... I'd be failing you as a friend if I didn't pull myself off of this, Scottie."

"I know, Warren, I know," Cyclops said with a smile that was dragged down by pain. "I was trying to come up with a way to get Sam on the team... short of Mirrin, I can't think of anyone else who might be as well suited... And, considering how close he is to both of them, he's really got as much right... But thank you. For making things easier."

"I just didn't want you thinking that I was chickening out, or that I didn't want to risk my neck just because I'm not close with Nathan." They said nothing for a moment, and then Warren sighed. "You'll bring them home, Scottie. That son of yours will be pissed off that his Dad had to rescue his steel-plated ass again, but..."

"But that would be par for the course - the bitching, not the rescuing - and just this once, I won't mind," Scott finished. 

"I'll see you later, then," Warren said and clasped his friend's shoulder. "Tell Jeannie I'll have a stiff drink waiting for her when you get back. Between you, Alex, and Nathan, she's going to wish she never married into that clan of yours."

Scott was about to say something, but the clank and clang of the hangar doors unlocking drew his attention away. With a wave, he hoisted his gear over his shoulder and headed off towards the Blackbird.

***

back to the index


	18. FP 18: Crisis of Faith

Future Pluperfect: Chapter 18 

* * *

Textual Poaching Alert: Marvel owns everyone but Mirrin, although Social Services would have stripped custody long ago...

* * *

After the sturm-und-drang that had surrounded the departure of the team to Vanuatu had settled somewhat, Betsy Braddock was left with silence. And silence, in the X-Mansion, was usually not a good thing. For a group as populated as they were by thieves, assassins, spies, and others whose 'professions' necessitated the ability to work without making a sound, the X-Men were a noisy group in their downtime. 

A quick telepathic sweep indicated that all was well, but Betsy still felt a gnawing bit of _something_ in her stomach. And it wasn't the after-effects of the tuna melt she had made for lunch. 

Hank was down in his lab, Logan was on monitor duty, Remy - as far as she could tell - was doing something innocuous on the roof, Rogue was breaking rocks in the small quarry to the south of the house (hence the probability of Remy being up on the south-facing roof), Ororo was tending to her plants, and Warren... was brooding. 

_What else is new?_ Betsy mused as she headed down the great hallway that bisected the first level of the main mansion. It wasn't that she was looking for him, more that she couldn't find him and was curious. 

Following the faint sounds of music, she found him in the west study. This was where Xavier liked to spend his recreational time and it showed. The walls were painted a deep forest green, but mahogany bookcases crammed with leather-bound volumes covered most of them. The only light came from either the large windows framed by heavy drapes or the antique lamps that were scattered tastefully throughout the room to rest atop similarly tasteful small tables. The room had a state-of-the-art stereo system, the speakers well hidden throughout, but Bobby had once given Jubilee a memorable lecture on why it was blasphemous to use it for anything written past 1850. 

The room was sumptuous without being decadent, quiet without losing its warmth, but it was not a popular destination for any of the X-Men. The various members may live in a mansion, may have access to limitless amounts of technology, food, and other needs both essential and not, but all of those things could be classified as being tied to their profession. The demands and expectations of the personal were something else. 

Underneath the Shi'ar-fabricated costumes and behind the X that graced their uniforms, the X-Men were by provenance a motley crew and most of them felt distinctly out of their league in a room that fairly screamed out 'old money' and 'upper class'. There was a code of conduct and a set of manners that went along with rooms like this and one normally didn't learn these things in Mississippi or Nebraska or Siberia. 

As a result, the east study (with its more contemporary furnishing) was the better-used place for quiet recreation, just as the east drawing room was the place for entertainment with its giant screen television and the most-used stereo in the mansion. There were a few among the team that either were brought up to be comfortable in the trappings of wealth (namely herself and Warren), or were sufficiently versed in its nuances to be comfortable (such as the erstwhile Kurt Wagner and, Betsy suspected, Remy, but he'd be loath to admit such) or were so truly self-possessed as to not care (Ororo and Logan came to mind, although Logan's strong personal preferences almost negated it). Everyone else, however, seemed to have found better places to do whatever could be done in the west study and, being social creatures, those who could find joy in the room had followed the pack to the other side of the grand staircase. 

Nevertheless as she pushed open the not-quite-closed door to the room, Betsy was utterly unsurprised to find Warren. He was sitting on a divan that allowed his wings to rest comfortably with a book in hand. Warren was one of the only people she knew who could keep his lips perfectly still while reading.

"You're peaceful," Betsy said quietly. 

Warren looked up from the book, his finger going to the line where he had stopped, as she knew it would, and smiled apologetically. "I wanted to know if it worked; apparently it does."

Crossing the threshold and half-closing the door behind her, Betsy didn't bother to mask her confusion. "If what worked?"

"Way back when we started out," he began, gesturing with his head for her to join him, "When it was just Jeannie and Scott and Bobby and Hank and I..."

"The good old days," Betsy chuckled as she sat down in a club chair next to Warren. "Uh-oh, one of _those_ stories," she sighed dramatically, taking care to make sure that he knew that she was only teasing. 

"After our first few missions," he continued unperturbed, "we'd always come back expecting Professor Xavier to be waiting by the door, anxious to see us return."

"Like a puppy?"

"Like a parent," Warren corrected with a smirk. "Like the anxious father who'd finally allowed his kids to go around the corner on their bikes all by themselves and wanted to make sure they came back."

"But he didn't," Betsy finished. 

"He didn't. Instead, we'd come back home, tripping on our adrenalin highs, and sometime between stowing our gear and hitting the shower, we'd get a mind-call to meet in the west study in precisely one hour. We'd show up, all combed and pressed and still ready to bounce off the walls and he'd be sitting here," Warren pointed as he spoke to the club chair that sat opposite from the one Betsy was in, "all calm and quiet. There'd be Haydn playing on the stereo and he'd have a tea service set up and when I showed up - I was always the last one down - he'd finish his page, put down his book and... debrief us, I guess."

"Well, it's good to know that he started doing that from the beginning and it wasn't just because he was bored with the later generations," Betsy said. She knew there was more than just simple nostalgia at play here. Warren wasn't prone to that sort of thing.

"He'd always make us have our next meal together afterwards, in the formal dining room even though there was just the six of us. And you can't help but behave in that room," Warren's sigh melted into a chuckle. "Well, at least you couldn't help but behave in that room. It used to be a lot more forbidding than it is now."

Betsy nodded in understanding. What she didn't understand, however, was where Warren was heading. It obviously had to do with the current mission and with Jean and Scott going after their erstwhile son, but Betsy wasn't quite sure why this would be affecting Warren so deeply. 

"I used to get angry at him, so angry that he was sucking all the fun out of it. He never said he was relieved to see us return unscathed; he didn't even let us relive our adventures at table. He didn't need to know what had happened because he had kept in mental contact with all of us, at least most of the time he did. So he'd tell Bobby to pipe down and he'd ask us about our studies, instead... It was just such a _downer_. As if we were supposed to just metabolize all that adrenalin and move on with our lives."

"Theoretically that's what you're supposed to do, spoke the self-confessed action junkie," Betsy said. Theoretically, that was what Warren had always done without problem. Oh, sure, he was usually up for a rollicking good time in bed the night back from a mission, but that was hardly acting out in any fashion. 

"A couple of years ago, after the whole mess with the Shadow King had settled down, I asked him about it," Warren continued after a pause seemingly to contemplate the whorls on the lampshade next to his left elbow. "I asked him how he could sit here and drink tea and listen to Haydn and not seem the least bit... excited about our exploits."

"What did he say?"

"'Practice, Warren. Practice.' He said it was all he could do not to wear holes in the floor. He was so scared for us, so angry at himself for what he was making us do, so sad that there was such a need for us to be doing it and nobody else to handle things that it took all of his will and all of his strength to not see things through our eyes and be there with us through our minds. 

"He felt so powerless not only because he couldn't face the evil himself, but also because he couldn't be there to catch us should we fall... he'd come in here to distract himself. To force himself to be distracted by the music and the literature and the comfort and the warmth of this room so that he couldn't dwell on the discord and the hatred that he had thrown us up against."

"Which brings us around to the next question," Betsy began gently.

"What am I doing here?" Warren asked almost rhetorically as he showed off the room with a wave of his right arm. "Trying to distract myself, Elisabeth, trying to distract myself."

On an intellectual level, Betsy knew that Warren had his fears, just as he had his regrets and his dreams. But he was so good at hiding them all, even from her, that when he did let them be seen they were all the more striking. She remembered a breakfast in town one early morning, sometime at the end of the whole Kwannon saga, where she had gotten probably her first good glimpse into those depths. She had been surprised then, but didn't understand why she was still a little surprised now.

"They'll be all right, Warren. We'll be all right, too."

"Will they? I don't like Cable or Domino, I don't like what they represent, I don't like their set of beliefs, I don't like how they carry themselves and I sure as hell don't like that they ended up in charge of the kids. But I respect their abilities. A lot. And those abilities weren't enough to keep them from getting killed."

"But they were just two. There's a whole team..."

"You've seen the Danger Room session logs. Cable alone has taken down an entire X-squad. Hell, if the stories are even half-right, he and Domino have taken down whole countries together." 

"Aren't you underestimating the planning that went into this, not to mention the powers of those who are on their way?" Betsy asked mildly. "You better than almost anyone else know what Scott and Jean and even Bobby are capable of. Plus Mirrin..."

"There _was_ no planning. What does it matter about the mutant powers that went off to the tropics if they're just ad libbing?" Warren put the book down so that he could gesture with both hands. "We don't know how, who, why, or what, and it took three telepaths to figure out when and where! We're fooling ourselves if we think that they can go in there, grab Cable and Domino, and get out again without any blood loss." 

Warren's wings beat in emphasis, Betsy noticed, a sure sign that he was agitated. When he was calm, Warren's wings would flutter gently as if on some invisible breeze. But these hummingbird-like motions were dead giveaways of deeper stress. Warren himself had joked that his harness was good for business - it kept his emotions to himself when he couldn't otherwise.

"What happens when comes down to the battle?" he continued, drawing Betsy's attention back from his wings to his face. "Apart from Mirrin, who on that away team is cold-blooded enough to kill on instinct, without wasting time coming up with a non-fatal solution to the problem? I'm not saying that it's their fault - I'm not Death anymore, I don't think I could do it, either - I'm just saying that there's going to be a point where it's going to be shoot-first, think-later and the X-Men aren't trained for that. And I'm scared that we've hit that point."

"We've been in bad spots before, Warren, even worse than this one," Betsy sighed and leaned back into the solid comfort of the deep chair. "The Phalanx. Onslaught. The Shadow King. Should I go on? There have been crystal waves and demons and we're probably due for another go-'round with the Sentinels and..."

"And this is the first time I've sat here powerless while most of my oldest friends are off to face a foe of that sort of magnitude with precious little on their side but determination. I want to be with them, but I know they're better off with Sam than with me. I want to help, but there's nothing I can do. Nothing any of us can do."

"It's been like that this whole time, love," Betsy said with a touch of a grin. She wasn't sure where this newfound fatalism was coming from, but she would be damned before she succumbed to it. Sure it was hard, but she _liked_ what she did, liked that she was helping others instead of taking breaks from being a London socialite to go skiing in Switzerland like all of her prep school classmates were now doing. Like all of Warren's 'normal' friends did. "We'll battle on like we always do. We're too dumb to give up and we've been rewarded thus far. We may look like shite, but we are undefeated."

"It's not fun anymore," Warren spoke quietly. He seemed to be picking up her internal thoughts better than her words, Betsy mused, and she did a quick mental check to see if she was telepathically leaking. She wasn't. 

"It's not 'let's go off and save the world and still have time to start a snowball fight with the kids from the day school down the road.' It's real now, real on a level it hasn't been before. Nobody died during Onslaught. Some people were missing during the Phalanx mess, but they turned up unscathed. But we're not unscathed anymore. Lebanon wasn't a freak accident, no more than Vanuatu is turning out to be. We've met our match, Betsy." 

"That's what everyone else thought, too. From Cameron Hodge to Farouk," she shrugged as she spoke. "And none of them were the last men standing. You've just been out of action for too long. You've forgotten that we don't stay dead. I didn't. You're worried that you're rusty and that you're out of sync. It's understandable; what we do is a little more complicated than riding a bike."

Warren inhaled sharply as if he were about to say something, then changed his mind and exhaled slowly, not quite a sigh. 

"The Kurioon is supposed to have come back to this time to kill Cable, right?" he not-quite-asked. "Well, they got him. Just like they got you. And if Mirrin can't undo the damage _again_, then all we're left with is to hope that Cable was all they came back to finish off. There's supposed to be a whole color spectrum, right? We started having problems at red. How long before our little time-walker can't keep up? What if she can't bring Cable back from the dead - does she help us still, or go back to when she came from and go for some other point in time? We didn't just fall off a bike here, Betsy. We blew both the battle and the war. _We lost._" 

There was nothing to be said to that, Betsy decided, and the two of them were left sitting in the west study with only the quiet refrains of Haydn's "Stabat Mater" to chase the tension from the air.

***

"Cannonball, can you tell what kind of tech we're looking at once we get there?"

A long silence, too long. "Uh... Cyclops? Sir?"

"What?" Cyclops didn't take his eyes off the instruments. The plane was being flown manually - autopilot would allow him too much time to brood. And Jean, currently sitting in back plotting who-knows-what kind of mayhem with Mirrin, had been quite sharp (not to mention correct) in warning him against that. Which was precisely why Sam was doing comm. instead of Bobby. Sam was a lot like Nathan, but tended to have as much problem with the secondary nature of 'why' as Scott did and was best kept busy for the same reasons. 

"Our there isn't there."

Flicking on auto-pilot, Cyclops swiveled in the pilot's seat. "What do you mean?" Although if it meant what it sounded like, it wouldn't be the first time he'd gone on a rescue mission to an island and had the island walk away on him.

"Ah mean that there's a blank spot on the radar where there should be an island," Cannonball answered. "Where there should be four islands, 'ccording to the atlas."

Cyclops sighed. "Well, I haven't had to do a water landing in a while, but it could just be a radar trick. If I was hiding the hatching grounds of a super-army of cyborgs, I'd probably try to block radar, too."

"That's what Ah'm figuring," Cannonball agreed with a slightly embarrassed shrug. "Else they got real quiet fish down there. That does answer your question 'bout tech, though. They got and they got good if it's enough to fool these scanners." He gestured with his chin at the comm. console. "We still have those EM-pulse guns from Lebanon, right?"

"We should," Scott affirmed, and then smiled to himself as he followed the younger man's train of thought to its logical conclusion. "Of course, we'll have to find the source of the jamming if we're going to knock it out with them."

"Might as well make use of those things while we can," Cannonball replied, his back a little straighter with his suggestion having been accepted. "If the Sister's correct 'bout the soldiers upgrading, then the guns'll just be glorified pea shooters before we know it."

"Point noted." 

The quiet in the cockpit allowed for Cannonball and Cyclops to catch bits of the conversation that was taking place aft. Cannonball was quite sure that his team leader was listening to the whole thing via his telepathic bond with Phoenix, but he was glad to put his own well-honed eavesdropping skills to good use even if there was no punishment in getting caught. 

"You might as well put the speakerphone on, Cannonball," Iceman called from the rear. "We can see those corn-cob ears of yours straining to... Ow! No hitting!"

"Leave the kid alone," Sam could hear Havok quietly chastise his teammate. 

"I'm just trying to make him feel like part of the team," Bobby defended himself. 

"You're making him feel like a freak," Alex snorted. "You're the accountant. I'm the former frat boy and varsity football guy. Who should be in charge of camaraderie?"

"But you're a Summers!... Hey, I said no hitting!" There was the sound of jostling and then silence. "You haven't been around for a while. This is how Cannonball and I always interact."

"Well, it's good to know you're still into hazing the rookies," Alex replied.

"What hazing? I don't haze. Hazing is illegal in many states, including New York."

"As I said, I'm the former frat boy. I know hazing when I see it. You did the same to me."

"That was just picking on you because you were annoying."

"No, that was you compensating for your lack in certain areas by wielding authority you didn't have."

"HEY!... Well, you listened to me. Who's the dummy?"

A sharp whistle that Sam knew without having to see had come from Jean. "Heckyl and Jeckyl. Are you two done yet?"

"Yes, Ma'am," both men chorused contritely. 

In the cockpit, Sam swallowed a chuckle. 

"Good to see you're not letting them get to you," Cyclops said without turning around. 

Sam sighed. "Y'all forget Ah'm _used_ to this stuff. This was X-Force at its most well-behaved. Domino and Cable usually had to..." he faded out. That wasn't a place Sam wanted to go right now. 

"'Usually had to what', Sam?" Cyclops asked after the pause continued for long enough that he knew that the younger man wouldn't be continuing. 

This conversation had been a long time in coming. He and Jean had quite frankly been too wrapped up in their own grief and the preparations to rescue Nathan and Domino to remember that while most of the X-Men harbored no great love for the erstwhile duo, there was at least one other team member who felt their absence deeply on the personal level. 

"Usually had to resort to dirty tricks to get us to stop," Sam finished, sounding like he was trying to make himself sound strong. It was typical Sam, Scott mused. "Cable would telepathically get us all to shut up and sit still. Domino was usually more direct - she'd take a shot at whatever it was we were fightin' over."

"What if it was just a war of words?" Cyclops was afraid to know the answer. 

"Light fixtures. For some reason, we tended not to snip at each other in the dark. Although she did shoot Ric in the a... rear that one time. But that was just a stun gun. And Ah think it was by accident. But with Dom's luck... Fat lotta good it did her this time, though."

Cyclops mentally nodded. This was a stage he had been waiting for, that Jean had told him to look for. Denial, then anger. Although anger would hardly be out of place, they had good reasons to be mad at both missing parties. 

"Fat lot of good it did both of them," he agreed. 

There was silence again. A curiously peaceful silence. 

"We left the Smothers Brothers alone with two telepaths," Cyclops mused aloud. "What say you Mirrin and Jean just turned off their speech centers?" He didn't need to turn around to catch the scandalized look on Sam's face. Not when he could see the reflection in the windshield. "Oh come, now. You just said Cable did it with X-Force."

"But... that's X-Force...," Sam almost sputtered, his disbelief so disarmingly childlike that Scott had to smile. "We were already in detention, ya know what Ah mean? Not the senior team..."

"You've got an entirely too high an opinion of this outfit, young Cannonball. And I say this as the leader of the crew," Cyclops chuckled. "There are moments when I wish I was a lot more like my son. I don't think anyone would take me seriously if I pointed a plasma rifle at them, though."

"Actually, you're a lot alike, sir," the younger man ventured after a pause to consider his words. "People don't really have a choice but to follow you. Ah mean, it's so obvious that you and Cable know what you're doing..."

"Would that that were true," Cyclops sighed. 

"Even when you don't, it's hard to tell," Sam allowed with a wry grin. "And you never ask anybody for anything you wouldn't give yourself. And you never ask for anything before you've given all that you could. Even..."

"Even if it means cutting off everything and everyone dear to you just to save them the pain," Scott finished with a frown. "It's a stupid trait, that one, and I'm disappointed that Nathan picked it up. Never more so than now, when I have to... when _everyone who cares about him_ has to spend time and energy tracking down the information that it wouldn't have hurt us to have in the first place."

"Yeah." Utterly and completely heartbroken. Scott the man and Cyclops the leader both flinched inwardly at letting this conversation get delayed so long. It was so easy to forget that even if Sam didn't need any coddling just because he was the junior member of the team, sometimes he just needed the comfort a parent could afford a child. Even Nathan had seen that, Scott mused, and had conveyed a father's pride amidst all of the drill work. 

A father's pride. It came in all sizes: his father's well-hidden version with himself and Alex, his own (more open, just as poorly received) with Nathan, Nathan's own tough love with Sam. It was all the same - that strange mix of fear that your son had followed you into the (very dangerous) hero business coupled with the gratification of knowing that you had somehow been considered a worthy example to follow. 

"It's all right to be mad at him, Sam," Scott said quietly. He didn't want to shatter the younger man's fragile self-comportment by asking him to come sit by him in the co-pilot's seat. Distance created an impression of strength and independence, even if they both knew it wasn't real. "And it's okay to be jealous that he trusted Domino with whatever this mission was and didn't think he could trust the rest of us. And to be pissed off for letting himself get killed without having the good grace to leave things finished instead of all these loose ends. Like leaving without saying goodbye. Or letting us say it, in whatever fashion we wanted. Even if it was just 'thank you.'"

Sam had been staring absently at the comm. console as he listened. But even though he kept his body facing forward, Scott could see Sam pick his head up and nod, knowing in turn that he would be seen. 

"It's also okay to doubt, Sam," Scott continued. "To doubt both that Nathan made the right decision as well as whether we'll be lucky enough to bail him out. We get so wrapped up in how things are here... we forget how precious life can be. And that our persistent inability to stay dead is a mixed blessing."

"That part Ah know all too well," Cannonball chuckled mirthlessly. "Ah'm faced every day with the knowledge that Ah'm probably gonna see everyone Ah know... that Ah'm gonna outlive a lot of people. Ah remember my brothers and sisters when they were born. Ah shouldn't be around to see them die." Sam was thoughtful for a long moment. "But you know 'bout that. You changed Cable's diapers."

"That I did," Scott agreed, realizing that Sam knew Nathan knew about it as well - Sam had been present at Tyler's death, had blamed himself for not doing the impossible and managing to stop it. "And it's fortunate for him that Maddie and I took him back to Alaska right away, before the New Mutants got a chance to play with him. Jean and I have a hard enough time reconciling the boy we raised with the man he became, I can't imagine how you would feel. One minute you're babysitting, the next you're taking orders."

Sam was as amused by the mental image as he was touched that Cyclops... that Scott would recognize that it would be interesting (to say the least) for him as well as for the immediate family. It was nice to know that people remembered that his tenure with Xavier's crew went back as far as it did, which was further than many of the current members of the team. 

"My grandparents probably take the whole Magically Undead Summers thing better than anyone else in the family," Scott continued thoughtfully. "Which is probably for the best - they're the ones who have had to grieve the most times. They have at various points survived their son, their grandsons, even their great-grandson. I think they really wished there had been a daughter somewhere along the line. Change the luck around, perhaps. But I'm amazed at their resilience. Every time someone dies, they mourn it as though it was the first time. And every time that person shows up again, they are just as pleased. I think I'm too cynical for that kind of unbridled emotion. I fear we all are."

"With all due respect, sir, Ah hope Ah never am."

"With all due respect, Sam, I hope you never are, either." 

Nathan, for all of his perversity about attachments and bonds, had taken a shine to the boy. And while Scott, in his most armchair-psychologist moments, occasionally wondered whether that affection was borne out of Sam's apparent immortality - Sam wouldn't die before his father as Tyler had - he couldn't help but feel as though he was letting his son down (and now, for the time being, failing his memory as well) by not protecting Sam better. Sam had been at his own father's side when the man died too young and he had been at Nathan's side during Onslaught as Nate had nearly lost a battle with his techno-organic virus. He really didn't need to be through the wringer like this again. Not at his age, no matter how myriad his experiences.

Scott let Sam collect his thoughts for another moment before speaking again. "Of course, irony being our constant companion and all, the best part of all this is that once we get to Nathan and Domino - and we **will** get to them - Nathan's going to be very ungrateful about how we're all fussing over him. He's going to spout some Askani proverb about how there's no point in mourning a tragedy that hasn't happened and tell us all to flonq off. I don't know Domino that well, but I can't see her taking it much better than Nate."

Sam let out a snort. "Uh, no. Ah don't see her takin' it much better, either. Domino's not real big on anything warm and fuzzy."

From the cabin, the quiet sounds of Mirrin and Jean talking were audible again. Scott wondered how much of the conversation between he and Sam Jean had been listening in on. 

"They'll understand," Sam mused aloud as he fiddled once more with the radar controls. "Domino will, Ah think... and between her and the Sister, Ah think they'll get Cable to, too. Ah think he's scared of her."

"Mirrin or Domino?"

"Both, but mostly the Sister."

"I think you're probably right," Scott agreed, thinking back to a rather epic Danger Room session Cable had dragged Mirrin into participating in the previous week. Actually, throw in Jean and the future version of Rachel and Nate really did have a healthy respect (to put it politely) of the opposite gender. "Fun, isn't it?"

Sam failed to swallow a cackle. "Oh, yeah."

***

http://www.geocities.com/nikimarzione/ 


	19. FP 19: The Truth Shall Set You Free

Future Pluperfect: Chapter 19 

* * *

Textual Poaching Alert: Marvel owns everyone, although Social Services would have stripped custody long ago...

* * *

"Are you sure that's going to be a good idea?" Jean didn't want to have this conversation out loud, but it would have been too obvious - not to mention rude - to do it telepathically.

"I don't see any other way to avoid risking both man and machine," Mirrin answered. "If radar isn't going to provide any useful data..."

"It isn't," Iceman confirmed as he walked back from the cockpit. He had taken over (taken back, more appropriately) the comm. duties from Cannonball a few hours ago. But despite much bravado about his impresario skills in that area, he had failed to get anything that the younger man hadn't been able to spot on his own. "Cannonball's right - they have very quiet fish down there."

"Speaking as the rusty old strategist here," Havok broke in, looking up from the printouts he was perusing, "I think it's a pretty good idea. Especially if Mirrin can get Cannonball to ground level without us resorting to tossing him out of the airlock."

"But," the projectile in question protested.

"If you've done that with X-Force, I **really** don't want to know," Cyclops interrupted. "I also don't want you going alone. We only have one flyer on this team, but Mirrin's capable of watching your back... I **know** you're nearly invulnerable when you blast, Cannonball, I just don't like to push the envelope so far before I have to, okay?"

"Yes, sir."

"So, everyone's on the same page? We're clear, no problems?" Cyclops looked around at his teammates, all of whom but one nodded.

_It's not the tactical I'm worried about_, Jean answered her husband telepathically. _Sam's going to have to see the bodies..._

_It won't rattle him anymore than he's been rattled. And if it does, that's why I'm sending Mirrin along with him_, Cyclops answered back.

_Are you sure that's a comfort?_

_Not especially._

The quiet - even when you know that two people speaking telepathically don't need silence, it tends to be granted anyway - was broken by the click-click of Mirrin checking the ammunition in a rifle by the forward munitions closet. Without turning around, she tossed it in Cannonball's general direction.

The man, now dressed for flight, easily caught it one-handed and courtesy of Cable's and Domino's constant exhortations to always check his own weapons (no matter who had already done so) performed the same test on his own.

Nodding at the satisfactory condition of his rifle, Cannonball looked up at Cyclops. "Ready to leave, sir."

A few feet away, Havok watched the cool efficiency of the soldier he still remembered as a gangly boy with a brush cut and a wide-eyed stare and reminded himself not to call Cannonball 'kid' anymore.

"You're clear on this, Mirrin?" Cyclops turned to face the future-born warrior. Previous experience in battle with the woman had convinced him that she shared Cable's willingness to abuse semantic loopholes when it came to following orders.

"Down to the ground, run a surface check while Cannonball performs air surveillance, and then back to the plane," she confirmed with no trace of humor. If she realized what Cyclops was doing, she didn't seem to care. "Primary objective is to determine the extent of Kurioon infestation among the four islands. Secondary objective is to find the hatching site and/or possible trail taken by Dayspring and Domino. Overriding objective is to keep Cannonball in one piece."

Cyclops nodded. "Go with peace," he told them in Askani.

Both Cannonball and Mirrin made the same reply in the same tongue, albeit out of sync. Mirrin, temporarily surprised out of her soldiers' impassive façade, looked questioningly at her partner.

"Ah don't know what it means, all Ah know is that Cable used to say it before heading off on a mission," he explained with a shrug. "It sounds sorta like his name in Askani, but Ah don't think it is."

"Actually, his surname comes from that expression," Mirrin replied with a gentle half-smile that looked completely out of place on her. "It is a... derivation, I believe, is how you'd say it. What you said means 'return with hope'."

Cannonball nodded and the soldier-masks returned and two heartbeats later, Jean wasn't sure she had seen the flash of emotion that had passed between the two. Sam, well trained by Cable, wasn't leaking anything and Mirrin never showed a thing, so there was no way to know.

Havok and Jean watched as Mirrin reached out for Cannonball's shoulder and the air around them shimmered and the pair disappeared.

"Strange ducks, those two."

"Indeed," Jean agreed.

Sam had been teleported before, several times, but he never remembered to do what he always reminded himself that he wanted to do - keep his eyes open in transport. This time was no different. Before he opened his eyes, he felt the soft slide of sand beneath his boots and the warm, humid air of a beach and smelled both the sweet fragrance of exotic flowers as well as the distant smell of something less pleasant, like a putrefying fish.

"Don't," Mirrin commanded softly. "Don't open your eyes."

"Why not?"

"Trust me."

"Ah'm not a kid, Sister, and Ah have to be able to see where Ah'm going," he replied with a mixture of anger and irritation. Anger at the woman - who couldn't be that much older than him, if at all - for treating him like a sensitive child, irritation with this selfsame woman for continuing to think that she could blithely order him around. She had manipulated him into killing that telepath in Lebanon (whether or not it was necessary was besides the point, he could have come to that same decision by his own thought processes and felt much better about the deed); she wasn't going to get a second chance.

"Open them, then." Evenly, in that same indulgent tone that Cable used when he knew you were stepping into shit purely to spite him.

So it was really no surprise that when Cannonball opened his eyes, he wished he hadn't.

It had been not quite two days since Cable and Domino had been killed, but exposure to near-constant sunlight and salt breezes had put the bodies in terrible shape. **That** was the smell. Lying on the beach, there was no protection not only from the elements, but also from scavengers. A circle of scattered entrails, blood, and chunks of discolored flesh ringed what remained of the bloated bodies; scraps of hair, clothes, and other inedibles marred the otherwise pristine expanse of white sand.

"This is my only reference point," Mirrin explained gently, her soft voice balancing otherwise unapologetic words. "I wanted to hop us over to the next island." She pointed in the opposite direction of the bodies, across the small expanse of water.

"No point now," Cannonball replied, swallowing hard to counteract the still strong need to retch. "Unless you want to start there."

"Well, we know that there is a Kurioon presence here," Mirrin reasoned aloud. "If it hasn't stretched to the others, then we can bring the team down to one of them. I suspect the difficulty will lie in hiding the plane."

"Ah can start my sweep in that direction," Cannonball offered, pointing towards where Mirrin had originally intended to teleport them. "Or do you want me to stay close?" He left his tone ambiguous, not wanting to know if she wanted to protect him and somehow doubting it was the other way around.

"I can stay in telepathic contact with you wherever you wander," Mirrin replied, eyes closed as she telepathically scanned their immediate surroundings. "But let me know if there is any activity whatsoever. We don't want to attract any sort of attention. It will make time-walking difficult."

"How?" Genuine curiosity, not doubt, and Cannonball softened his mental shields enough to make that clear to his partner.

"At best, they are waiting for us with increased arms," she answered. "At worst... At worst, the cost of rescuing Dayspring and Domino becomes prohibitive."

"Ah thought getting Cable was the whole point." Sam knew he sounded a little petulant and a lot confused, but didn't care.

Mirrin muttered something to herself in Askani and then gave Cannonball and ironic smile. "There is a point at which the mission becomes more important than the man," Mirrin said as if she was remembering something bittersweet. Then her expression hardened. "Dayspring isn't the only one who can fulfill his task. He's just the best suited. If the price of making sure Nathan is the one to complete the mission grows too dear, then... a less expensive option must be found."

Cannonball stood there stunned for a moment, then turned and walked a few feet away, still under cover of the trees. He stared out at the lapping waves, at the beautiful flowers, at the half-picked-over, half-rotting head (the T-O virus proving impervious to scavengers but not nature) lying in the sand. Finally he turned back to Mirrin.

"Everyone's sayin' that you'd sacrifice the lot of us to save Cable. But you'd also sacrifice Cable to save your mission, whatever it is," Cannonball accused, voice rising. "Did he know that before he ended up on that beach, or did he die hopin' that you're gonna go back and pull him out before he gets his head cut off?"

"Dayspring knows this lesson better than you could ever want to, Samuel. He has watched both family and friends sacrifice themselves for the good of his cause," Mirrin hissed at him. She didn't sound angry, he realized, just trying to keep her voice down. "He asks no more quarter than he has given."

"Ah thought you were his friend," he said after a long moment. "Ah thought you'd give more quarter for him." Disappointment fairly dripped from his words.

"I am his friend," Mirrin answered quietly, eyes closed either in frustration or pain. "And it is precisely because of that that I do not betray his goals. Do you have any idea of what he sacrificed to come here-and-now? Almost all that he is. What sort of friend would I be if I threw that away?"

Sam couldn't come up with an answer to that, no more than he could sustain his anger. Through his still-softened shields he could feel the regret that Mirrin was undoubtedly trying to show him (why else would her normally impermeable shields leak?) and all of a sudden, he felt like a fool.

"You're not," Mirrin said, not even trying to hide that she could read his thoughts so clearly. She crossed the gap between them and looked up at Sam, resting a hand on his shoulder. "You are acting passionately on the information you have. Your loyalty to Nathan is unswerving and you have your doubts about mine. You are entitled to them, just as I am entitled not to justify myself before them. We must establish our own trust, not rely upon our mutual relationship with Nathan. In the meanwhile, we have work to do."

Sam ran his hand over his face as Mirrin turned away. "Ah'm... there is no sorry," he sighed. "Where should Ah start my sweep?"

"I think you had the right of it," Mirrin said, nodding at the non-apology. "Head towards the other islands and we'll see about bringing everyone down. They are probably already wondering where we are."

"Ah'll comm. them from the air," Cannonball agreed. "And Ah'll stay outta sight."

With that, he took off.

***

_Mirrin! Cannonball!_

The telepathic scream forced Mirrin to wince and she felt/heard Cannonball groan along their telepathic link.

_Yes, Jean?_ Coolly, although there was underlying concern for the terror-laced mind-call. She had been prowling along through the forest that seemed to run the course of most of the island. Her initial movements had been careful and slow, done in careful consideration of both her telepathy and the small heat sensor she had been given. But the sensor had gone off too many times on account of the wildlife native to the island that she had adjusted it to only warn her of temperature spikes that would include large troop movements and had proceeded with a little more liberty. That did not mean, however, that she could stand in the shade and chat idly.

_We can't sense you two. The mini-Cerebro isn't picking up anything and Iceman can't reach either of your comm. units._

_We're fine,_ Cannonball answered, although Mirrin could still sense the untruth of that statement. _There's some sort of force field up. That's probably why Domino's SOS got lagged. I don't know where the borders are or what the ceiling might be - I don't see any buoys or floating broadcasters, so it's either on underwater anchors or from a central source._

_It's probably electromagnetic shielding,_ Mirrin didn't pause in her movements as she spoke. She was sure any Kurioon guards would be watching solely through their own heat sensors and they were less likely to pick her up if she kept her movements similar to those of passing animals. _And it's undoubtedly on a central source. The Canaanites would have very little experience with water-based fortifications._

_Cyclops wants to know if there will be a problem landing the plane_, Jean said after a pause, presumably one she had spent passing on the information. _We have some EM shielding._

_Then probably not. We'll discuss this later_, Mirrin answered. She wasn't intending to be rude, but it was hard enough watching out for herself as well as maintaining contact with Cannonball without yet another distraction. She sent a wave of mild apology down the link to Jean.

_Phoenix out, then,_ Jean replied with a telepathic version of a nod.

Kilometers away, Cannonball flew at tree level over the second of the three islands south of the one Cable and Domino had died on. So far, he hadn't seen any sort of sign that the Kurioon was active there or had even visited. There was no sign of civilization at all and he mused on the possible uses as a vacation spot before reigning his imagination back in.

_I'm starting to suspect we won't be finding any incursion anywhere but on that island_, he reported to Mirrin as he flew over the southern end of the last island. _In fact, if that canoe-like thingie is any indication, the Kurioon doesn't even seem to care. We got fishermen down there, would you believe. They're checking for shellfish a couple of klicks from the thirty-eighth century's most dangerous mobile army unit's headquarters._

Mirrin smiled at the amused tone of Cannonball's mental voice. _Well, if all of the action is over here, you might as well join me. I'm running out of trees to hide behind._

_Be there in two shakes of a rooster's tail_, Cannonball answered with a grin as he changed direction, his mood greatly improved for having flown so long. It was an expression that had flummoxed Cable for the longest time (before the big man had decided that roosters were unacceptable chronological devices because of the lack of continuity between one rooster's tail and another and had consciously forbidden himself to think upon the matter any further) and Sam allowed himself to enjoy the irony of using it in a context that hopefully included Cable's rescue.

Following Mirrin's mental flare, Cannonball found the woman at the edge of the trees a kilometer or two up the beach from where Cable's and Domino's remains lay.

"Well, I guess we know how they got here," he said as he landed, gesturing to the small boat hidden among rocks and artfully arranged flora close to the shore. It was nothing fancier than a rowboat with a small outboard motor and Cannonball idly wondered how Domino and Cable had balanced themselves in the rickety transport. "And that they got here without being spotted, else there'd probably be signs of fighting close by."

"Indeed," Mirrin agreed. "We can probably extrapolate that they arrived from one of the more populated islands to the south, but it's really no matter. The Kurioon never found the vessel."

"'Cause it's still intact?" Cannonball looked around. They were effectively hidden by the trees but still had a mostly unobstructed view of beach and coastline. "They might've found it after they found Cable and Domino... Leave it as a trap, make it look like a safe landing point."

"That strategy requires more subtlety than the Kurioon usually possesses," Mirrin answered. "Think back on your experiences with them; there have been several occasions where they would have accomplished more had they chosen a method other than brute force. But the Kurioon still relies almost exclusively on the fact that they are superior fighters. The Harvesters and Colorless are nearly incapable of artifice and the more advanced models are merely stealthy and can perform a wider array of tasks."

"Like sneaking up on us and destroying our escape routes in advance," Cannonball agreed ruefully. Minot had proven that several times over.

"Exactly. At Green, the Kurioon start acquiring some level of independent thought, but even then, the scope is narrow. They act as they react - according to probability and logic. The ability to be irrational is one of the few advantages man has left."

Cannonball thought on the matter as he cleared branches away from the top of the boat on the off chance that Cable and Domino had left something behind. They hadn't. "Okay, so logic says that the odds of anyone else important stumbling across the boat are small enough that it doesn't make sense to lie in wait. But that just means that it probably isn't a trap, not that they never found it."

Mirrin chuckled. "The beach is undisturbed. Had any of the soldiers found the boat, they would have done as we are doing and investigated it. But we found the boat still covered and the sand near it is undisturbed in comparison to the surroundings. Either they put everything back the way they found it - including smoothing out the beach - or they were never here in the first place."

"Thank you, Mr. Holmes," Cannonball drawled, not bothering to explain the reference at Mirrin's raised eyebrow. "But what does this tidbit of information do for us?"

"It tells us that the Kurioon knew that Nathan and Domino were alone. The boat isn't _that_ well hidden and were they unsure, the entire island would have been crawling with seeker-guards," Mirrin explained as she looked around at both trees and horizon.

Cannonball watched as Mirrin closed her eyes and seemed to meditate. He knew she was committing the scene to memory, presumably to have another reference point to teleport to apart from the spot where she and Jean had watched Cable and Domino be killed, and allowed himself to ruminate on the various quirks of the teleporters he had known over the years.

Ilyana could traverse both time and place with her stepping disks, but there were enough mishaps and missed destinations to make Cannonball wonder about how strong her control over the disks was - he vaguely remembered some explanation having to do with using dark magic for good purposes, but Magik had never been especially forthcoming in those matters. And then there was that intermediate stop in Limbo to negotiate around.

Nightcrawler's pit stop was also in some other dimension, an improvement over Limbo, but in this one he was still subject gravity and velocity and all the other little quirks of physics. And Kurt had a distance limit, something that was occasionally enough to render his mutation unhelpful to the situation even if his agility and brains could usually compensate.

Lila... Lila had her Dyson sphere and her ability to teleport whole planets if she felt like it. There was probably more, but Sam admitted that he had been too... distracted to take notes on the rest of it. Lila had some rather impressive other powers that were strictly female, too.

"Ready?"

Cannonball snapped out of his reverie to find Mirrin smirking at him. "Yeah. How do you want to divvy up the search here? Same as before?"

"As beautiful as this unmarred expanse of nature is, I've had my fill of wandering through trees," Mirrin answered after a pause. "The nest must be on the other side of the island, so it's only a matter of how we get over there without being spotted."

Cannonball allowed himself a grin. "Want a lift?"

Mirrin looked at him questioningly and Cannonball understood why. For the first few weeks he had treated her like a dignitary who would be disrespected with a touch and then just an hour or so earlier he had accused her of wanting to sacrifice all of the X-Men. "Look, if Ah can carry Cable, Ah don't think you're gonna be much of a strain. Besides, it's the most effective way there if you can't 'port us."

Mirrin nodded and Cannonball took her into an embrace - it would be less awkward to hold her with her back to his front, but this way Mirrin could hold on to him should he require a free arm.

After they blasted off, Mirrin wriggled a little to move over so that she was pressed against Cannonball's hip. The position allowed her to see forward as well as behind them and it seemed to ease the discomfiture of the forced intimacy.

They followed the tree line up the coast and away from their original landing point, but soon the trees started to thin out and they had to rise into the air to avoid outcroppings of rocks.

_What now_?

_The nest is probably inland rather that along the coast, but I'm not sure how safe we are over open ground. We have fulfilled our mission objective, so we should venture as close as we dare and no further_, Mirrin replied.

Thinking back to his earlier exchange with Mirrin, Cannonball was inclined to turn back now rather than jeopardize any chance at rescuing Cable and Domino. Then, before he could say anything, he something out of the corner of his eye.

_Uh, I didn't read the environmental report too closely, but what are the odds that really big birds are native to this island?_

The large bird was still a distance away, but it was flying straight for them.

_One of the disappeared mutants had the ability to turn into a bird, correct_?

_Crap_, Cannonball groaned, thinking more impolite thoughts at a level where he knew Mirrin couldn't 'hear' him. _The Bangladeshi kid. I don't remember his name. He can turn into a condor._ Cannonball suddenly dropped their altitude and headed offshore, trying not to think about the fact that their being spotted may have cost Cable and Domino their lives. _Do you want to 'port us away?_

_He's seen us, but he doesn't know we're human_, Mirrin replied, her mental voice sounding a little preoccupied. _I've been hiding us as a bird to confuse any possible witnesses, but we're not any sort of bird that he would have ever seen, so he's probably curious. If we suddenly disappeared, he'd get suspicious._

_So I let him come... sniff us, or whatever the bird equivalent is?_ Idly, irrationally, Cannonball mused that Warren had been wrong. This was a situation in which Angel would have been infinitely better suited than he was.

_Flonq, no! I can work on 'convincing' him that we are just a single, tiny little bird of no importance, but that might make us look like a meal. We're going to have to outfly him._

Cannonball groaned aloud. "Great. We get to play chicken pretendin' we're a pigeon."

_You doubt your ability to outfly our pursuer?_ Mirrin didn't understand the expression her partner had used - her colloquial English extended only so far - but could guess the meaning from her telepathic link with Cannonball.

_He's what, seventeen? I know what I was like at that age... a regular barnstormer and a showoff, even when I was just showing off for myself. He's going to be a hotshot and he's going to be hard to shake. Hold on tight._

No sooner had Mirrin tightened her grip on Cannonball's midriff than she found herself fighting back a yelp. They plummeted in free fall as the condor swooped closer, claws extended, and cawed out a warning.

Mirrin didn't need to watch the ground to know it was coming up quickly; her spatial sense, honed through years of teleportation, sent off warnings all on its own. Terminal velocity had long since been reached when she felt Cannonball's arms tighten around her as he pulled them up sharply into an upswoop. Peering around the shoulder her face was pressed against, Mirrin caught a glimpse of wingtip. They had not shaken their pursuer.

With the lump in her throat forced back down through the sheer gravitational force Cannonball was attempting to overcome, Mirrin tried to go over their options. Teleporting was still not a good choice - even in bird form, the teenager had some human thought processes (and those had probably been either augmented or co-opted by the Kurioon) - and would register their disappearance. That in turn would bring out the seeker-guards and two humans attempting to pass as a tiny bird would not fool them.

A sharp left turn gave Mirrin another glimpse of their pursuer. He was still close and getting closer, but more disturbing were the waves of joy and exhilaration emanating from the teen bird. He was enjoying this, perhaps too much. The Kurioon undoubtedly had someone watching the boy-bird and, no matter that the thirty-eighth century was as unkind to aviary beasts as it was to land-based beasts, the sheer pleasure radiating off the condor would attract curiosity if not suspicion.

_I'm taking us to the trees_, Cannonball warned. _I don't know where else to go and I think he'll eventually catch up to us if we stay in open ground. Can you risk teleporting us when he can't see us?_

_That will work. The sooner the better, I suspect. The thrill of the chase will prove no less an attractor of attention than two warriors flying through the air carrying rifles._

Another sudden drop in altitude, this one not as severe, and Cannonball had them rapidly approaching the tree line. Belatedly, he realized that Mirrin had referred to him as her equal and filed the thought away for future contemplation. Slowing down enough to slip between branches, he brought them to ground at a spot darkened by thick foliage overhead. He looked around before he stopped blasting, wanting the protection of his blast field for the both of them until he knew there was nobody around.

Mirrin felt the static-electric buzz of the field dissipate and took a step back and out of Cannonball's embrace. Breathing deeply, she chuckled.

"What?"

"You look... surprisingly relaxed," Mirrin answered a little breathily. Between the speed at which they were traveling and adrenaline rush and the thin air from the altitude, oxygen had been at a premium she hadn't realized until it was more plentiful. Fighting back lightheadedness, Mirrin tried not to stumble.

"It's flying," Cannonball answered with a shrug. "Ah may scoff at the tendencies of youth," he smiled crookedly as he waved his arms in mimicry of their recent aerial acrobatics, "but Ah'm not above admitting that Ah still enjoy them."

"Good," Mirrin nodded. "Dayspring's love/hate relationship with his own gifts has not infected you."

Cannonball chortled. "When we catch up with him, Ah'm gonna tell him you said that."

Mirrin nodded again and smiled as she reached for Cannonball's shoulder. "You do that."

The air shimmered as a lone condor circled above the treeline, searching for his prey.

back to the index


	20. FP 20: The Quick and the Dead

Future Pluperfect: Chapter 20 

* * *

Textual Poaching Alert: Marvel owns everyone but Mirrin, although Social Services would have stripped custody long ago...

* * *

"Ororo! What a surprise." Kitty Pryde's image smiled on the vidscreen as she spoke. "I'm glad it's you."

"Is there a problem, Kitten?" Ororo let the subtle jibe at her being on monitor duty pass without comment. Routinely getting out of sitting in the small room covered with video equipment and surveillance technology was really her only temptation to abuse her role as team leader. It was unremitting boredom, especially for those who did not grow up tied by a tether to the nearest television set. 

With some of the newer members, Ororo could periodically play upon her well-known case of claustrophobia - mentioning such in a tiny whisper to one of the newbies would invariably get an offer of taking over a shift or two, at least until Jean or one of the others ratted her out - but here, now, in a time of crisis and in a position of leadership over a team not her own... 

"Problem?" Kitty considered. "Not really. It's just... there are some things that I don't understand about the robot that we got from the Kurioon. I was hoping that you could solve a few riddles for me."

Storm laughed. "Are you sure that you want me to help you out with anything to do with technology?"

"Something else, actually," Kitty elaborated. "What do you remember about the history of the Danger Room?"

An elegant white eyebrow arched. "The Danger Room? You know as much as I do, I expect. It was first designed with the abilities of the original team members in mind, but after the Sh'iar technology, it was much more adaptable. Why?"

"Are you sure that the Danger Room is all Sh'iar?" Kitty asked.

"The parts of it that are not of this world, yes, so far as I know," Ororo replied, tilting her head curiously. "Why?" 

"There are just a few weird similarities between some of the robot parts and some of the circuitry in the Danger Room," Kitty explained. "If I knew for certain that it wasn't a coincidence, then maybe we could use that information to make some more effective weapons. We've broken the controls in the Danger Room enough times to build upon past experience there."

"Have you spoken to Forge? He certainly did enough tooling around in here while he was based with us," Storm replied. Ororo didn't want to think about that too much. 

"He wasn't sure either," Kitty admitted with a frown. "All the hardware looked equally foreign to him, even if he could figure out how to make it all work. He said that at the time he wouldn't have known Sh'iar from Skrull from anything else that wasn't made by Radio Shack." Kitty sighed. "But he does agree that knowing that the Kurioon 'bots are of the same construction as at least part of the Danger Room would be a lot of help."

"However, the only people who can answer that question are not available right now," Ororo completed the thought aloud. She refused to consider the notion that their lack of availability would be anything but temporary. "I shall ask those who are in residence at present, but I am not sure whether they will be able to confirm anything."

The conversation continued for a few minutes more before it ended and Ororo was left feeling slightly melancholy as the video screen faded to black. 

Ororo did not consider herself maternal, not in the same way Jean tended to be even before her trip to the future to raise the infant Nathan. The part of Ororo that missed Yukio the most found it wildly hysterical that she had no special affinity for teenagers even after her own chance to relive the adolescent experience. Ororo had taken no special shine to the New Mutants while both teams had been in residence together and had not made much of a fuss over Jubilee after the girl stole away with them to Australia. 

It was this... lack... that made her feelings for Kitty all the more special. And a small part of Ororo, the part that had nothing to do with Yukio and everything to do with Forge, wondered if that wasn't the case because Kitty had gotten close before Ororo's shell hardened and made getting close impossible. Before the X-Men became her life instead of her life's work. 

It was Ororo's own awareness of this lack that made the current mission all the more fraught - it was all about children, both of the flesh and of the spirit. Jean and Scott were off trying to save their son and they were aided in turn by the grown version of a child they had known well (Jean had privately confessed to Ororo that her initial affection for the child-Mirrin had come in part out of guilt for how she had treated her recently deceased almost-daughter Rachel.) 

And then there was Samuel, simultaneously so young and so old and trying so hard not to feel the pain of losing two people whom he seemed to consider a set of surrogate parents. Scott had talked to Ororo about him months ago after a relatively extended visit by Cable had brought out a side of Samuel that the X-Men rarely saw. The rest of the team had noticed as well - what were they doing wrong that Samuel was so much more at ease with Cable, a man the rest of them went to great length to avoid, than with their own self-professed happy family? 

This happy family has shown to be less than so, Ororo mused as she scanned the news bulletins. The tumult with Remy had yet to settle down completely; the Kurioon only postponed that time of healing. Mirrin, although a temporary guest, was in the same precarious position - treated as an equal until any slight breeze exposed every misgiving real or imagined. It was beyond Ororo's fathoming to have anything other than total trust in one's teammates. Their very lives were on the line. 

A crash from the hallway interrupted any further attempts at analysis. Turning in her seat, Ororo looked out the open door - her one concession to her claustrophobia - and saw a non-plussed Rogue standing with a pile of packages of paper in one arm and scattered packages of same at her feet. One of the packages had broken open and papers were floating gently down the hallway on the air-conditioned breeze. 

"It's a good thing Ah got semi-invulnerable toes," Rogue said as she looked at the mess on the floor. "Those things are heavy. Ya think ya can spare a little breeze to help me catch those wanderers, 'Ro?"

"Of course," she answered. With a wave of her fingers, a small eddy of air brought the papers back towards Rogue. 

"Thanks," the other woman said as she crouched down to pick up the sheets. 

"You are welcome. While you are here, Rogue, I have a question for you," Storm began. "What do you know of the technology used in the Danger Room?"

"The Danger Room? It's Xavier and Forge and Kitty doing whatever they did with the Sh'iar technology, right?"

"That is what I thought as well," Storm concurred. "But Kitty seems to think that there might be a connection between the Danger Room circuitry and the Kurioon robots."

"Ah dunno," Rogue replied after a pause to consider. She stood up. "Ah don't remember ever hearin' about it being anything else. Of course, Ah don't remember payin' too much attention to all those discussions, either. Maybe Hank knows."

"I would like to ask everyone, but," she waved her arm in the general direction of the bank of monitors. 

"No way!" Rogue cried with a gleeful cackle. "Ah am _not_ fallin' for that. Ah'll go and find people. You can just stay there and suffer."

"It would have been a shame not to try," Ororo replied, taking her defeat with grace. 

Finding Hank McCoy was easy, all Rogue had to do was barge into the lab. But Hank couldn't remember anything of use from his time with the X-Men and admitted that much could have happened while he was a member of the Avengers. 

The other original member of the X-Men, Warren Worthington, was similarly stumped. He had spent more time away from the mansion than in it over the past several years and had an admittedly limited understanding of things technological under any circumstances. 

Psylocke and Wolverine were using the Danger Room when Rogue went to look for them, so she just left a note on the door. She wasn't expecting much from them, though. 

Finally, while it would have been easier to not ask him and say she did, Rogue went in search of Remy. 

In the weeks since his return, Rogue had eventually been forced to consider her own actions in Antarctica. All in all, she was okay with what she had done inside the citadel. It was what happened after she had dropped Remy in the snow and told her teammates that he had died that was still hard to come to terms with. 

_Being an X-Man may mean never having to say you're sorry, but it does mean following through on your promises. Right before I kissed him, I promised him unconditional love. And even if I didn't promise to *like* him unconditionally..._

Upstairs in her bedroom, locked away in a jewelry box, was a cassette tape. Five days after they had fled Antarctica, Rogue had returned by herself. To this day, she wasn't sure if she had gone back to save Remy if he was still alive or just to make sure that in fact he wasn't. She had found no trace of the man either way, but instead had found the tape recorder - probably originally intended to record the 'trial' - next to a broken-apart piece of machinery. There had been blood on the machine parts and chewed wires. A half-remembered rant of Marrow's on eating plastic to survive had let Rogue draw her own conclusions about why Remy had pried open the machine casing. 

Rogue had grabbed the tape recorder and fled, intending to use the tape - she knew without listening to it that it was a recording Remy had made - as a private torture, to be taken out and used to remind herself of what she had done. Rogue knew that she had not only broken a promise, but in doing so she had treated the man she supposedly loved even worse than an enemy. Carol Danvers had gotten better handling. 

The tape remained unlistened to. When Rogue had gotten back to Westchester, Remy was alive and in relatively good shape. Disturbingly good shape for someone who had been left shirtless and bleeding to freeze to death. And all of Rogue's plans to drown herself in remorse for what she had done had evaporated in a flash of anger that Remy not only proved her a liar, but also didn't have the good grace to die so that Rogue could properly wallow in her guilt. 

Much of that anger (at Remy or at herself, Rogue wasn't sure) had since been expended on Joseph - whose histrionics concerning Rogue's 'abandonment' of him were making her even more uncomfortable about what she herself must have sounded like at points - but Rogue had yet to decide on a course of action for dealing with Remy. 

But courses of action could hold, for now. Personal issues could wait until this Kurioon crisis had passed. Remy would hold. Because right now Rogue needed to find Gambit. 

She found him (but in jeans and a t-shirt, Gambit looked a lot more like Remy) dozing underneath an issue of an architectural design magazine in the east study. The magazine covered his face, but his hair glinted in the afternoon sunlight and he was stretched out such that Rogue couldn't help but think of a cat. 

"That's a face to wake up to, neh?" Remy asked no one in particular as he blinked away the sleep from his eyes. Then he seemed to realize that Rogue may not want compliments from him and looked abashed for all of half a heartbeat. 

"Got a question for ya, sleepyhead," Rogue began cheerfully, determined not to be rattled. "Two, actually."

"Shoot. Not literally," Remy said as he sat up, stretched out his legs and curled his toes. He knew Rogue was thawing on him a little, but he didn't want to push it. 

Rogue ignored the smooth motions of Remy stretching and proceeded to explain the situation regarding the Danger Room and Kitty Pryde's suspicions with her eyes focused somewhere over his left shoulder. "Got any ideas?" she asked when she had finished.

"Saw Cable look real comfortable the one time I was in the Control Room with him, mais... wait a second. The building's security system. It's the same stuff, ouais? Mirrin passed right through the sensors like they weren't on. Cable's broken in a few times too, je pense...," Gambit thought aloud.

"The security's coded to both of them, though, isn't it?" Rogue asked. She knew that look on Remy's face. It was the look he got when he was visualizing a plan in his head.

"Now, yeah, but she visited a few times 'fore then. Asked her 'bout it once, she said she'd tell me later. Never was a later," he said as he stood up. "C'mon. Let's go see 'bout that security breach."

Before Remy could leave the room, Rogue cleared her throat. "Mah second question," she began, waving the magazine. "Since when you interested in architecture?"

"It's got pretty pictures." Remy smiled charmingly. "Been reading it since I was a pup." 

"It's also got the details on their construction," Rogue corrected as she flipped through the magazine. "And how safe they are against break-ins."

"Told you, been readin' it since I was a pup," Remy repeated, this time accompanied by a shrug. Architecture magazines were the textbooks of the Thieves' Guild. 

Rogue pursed her lips in disgust, but said nothing as she followed him out. Part of her was disappointed in Remy for wanting to keep up with the latest 'trade news' and the rest of her was busy pointing out that she really didn't have the right to an opinion anymore. As usual, Rogue ignored all of the voices in her head and ran to catch up.

***

"How much time do you want to leave us?" Cyclops asked as the team assembled outside the Blackbird. Night had fallen and the stars shone brightly in the sky. Any other time, for any other reason, Cyclops might have spared a moment to appreciate the view. 

The plane had been brought in for a landing on an island just south of the Torres Islands, nobody wanting to risk triggering any alarms. Just because the plane could get through the shield set up by the Kurioon didn't mean that it should do so. 

"We can only narrow down the estimate for their arrival time to after nine the previous evening and an hour before their time of death," Mirrin replied as she checked the contents of her pack. "Considering that we don't know where they went on the island once they arrived, I'd like to keep it as close to their arrival as possible."

"Can you just pop us back to nine o'clock?" Havok asked as he watched Iceman kneel down by a tide pool illuminated by a moonbeam. "It can't be that easy. Although you did spend a goodly time memorizing that star map." Way back in his dim memories of archeology classes, Alex vaguely remembered that the Babylonians could tell time at night by the stars' position. Or was it Egyptians who could do that?

"I'm more worried about what will happen once we get there-and-then," Mirrin answered. "We know that they landed undisturbed, but how long they remained so is a mystery. I'd rather not have to fight more than we have to considering that we are basically unarmed." There were a few plasma rifles and the guns they had been carrying since Lebanon, but Mirrin didn't think either would do much good. The plastic explosives they carried would not be sufficient to take down a Kurioon nest on their own. 

"Cable's not going to be too cheerful about us telling him to turn the boat around and go back home," Iceman pointed out as he stood up, confident in his complete inability to recognize what sort of fish was swimming about in the puddle. "We could lie in wait for him, then tie him down long enough for you to teleport him back home... But Cyke's looking at me like I've grown three heads, so I'm assuming that we're at least going to poke around once we get him and Domino safe, right?"

"It depends on what he knows," Cyclops said. "If he's just here on a hunch, then yeah, we tie them up and take them home. If it's something we can handle, then..."

"We're assuming a certain individual is going to be a lot more forthcoming about his plans than he normally is, aren't we," Iceman observed to no one in particular. 

"If Jean can't crack through his shields, I can," Mirrin pointed out nonchalantly. 

"You can't just drill into someone's head like that," Iceman retorted somewhat indignantly, not sure whether Mirrin was joking or not and suspecting the latter. "Well, maybe you can. But you shouldn't. Bad manners and all."

"Dyin' for no good reason is worse manners. 'Sides, it's not like Cable hasn't done the same," Cannonball muttered loud enough to be heard, drawing a surprised look from Havok and Iceman. Just when he was about to look abashed, he could have sworn Mirrin winked at him. 

"Why don't we save the ethics discussion for when the situation stops becoming theoretical, hmm?" Jean asked as she descended the stairs from the plane and activated the security lockdown measures. "We have a long road to travel before then."

Despite Cyclops' concern that Mirrin would tire herself out before she had to bring them back in time, the Askani insisted that she could teleport the group to Cable and Domino's hidden boat. Cyclops acquiesced after not too much discussion and, were he honest with himself, he was a little relieved that he wouldn't have to pass by the site of his son's death. It was bad enough reliving Jean's memories, but the shudder of revulsion that had gone through Sam when he and Mirrin had given their report on their surveillance mission...

A moment after linking hands, they were there. Jean and Mirrin verified that they were alone for the time being, so the group headed into the nearby trees to get a feel for the area. Mirrin and Cannonball pointed out some of the features that they had noticed during daylight.   
  
An hour later, satisfied that the lay of the land was no longer unfamiliar, the group trudged back out to where the boat was hidden. Linking up once more, Mirrin made the air shimmer. 

"We're here? Well, we're here, but are we when?" Iceman asked after he got his bearings. Maybe you had to be used to teleporting, he mused. Out of all the X-Men, he figured he was one of the least exposed to it. Cannonball, on the other hand, seemed like an old pro. Cyclops and Jean were cool as ever and even Havok was doing a pretty good impression of not being seasick. 

"The boat's gone. We're early, at least," Cannonball observed. "Hopefully only a few hours so."

"The tide's going out," Havok pointed to the water that shone barely in the moonlight. "We can probably hide behind those rocks where the boat was until they come. It'll keep us out of sight from the trees and we know that any guards didn't come out onto the beach."

"Is there enough space for six?" Cyclops asked Jean, who was closest to the rocks. 

"I can arrange that," she announced after a closer inspection. The sound of wet sand hitting more wet sand followed and after a moment, Jean re-emerged. "One dugout ready for habitation."

"Before we bunker down," Cyclops said, "Havok, you and Cannonball set up remote motion and heat sensors to give us some advance notice should the Kurioon send any soldiers our way. We can leave the receiver here; it won't be visible in the dark," he finished as he dug the legs of the remote sensor's base into the sand. 

"Heat sensors," Iceman mused. "We're going to stick out like a sore thumb here - the fish may not be as quiet down here, but they're still cold. The rocks won't shield us completely. Anybody have any objections to hunkering down in an igloo?"

"Good idea, actually," Cyclops agreed. "Make sure you fix the top so..."

"Cyke. This is me here," Iceman pointed out with no small amount of exasperation. "I've been building igloos since my voice started to crack. I learned to compensate for heat years ago; how else could Hank and I barbeque inside..."

The comment got him a withering look from Cyclops, but no further construction suggestions. 

The almost-cave wasn't going to be roomy - the rock formation just wasn't wide enough - but it was acceptably between cozy and cramped and that would do for the time being. 

Once the group settled in, Cannonball and Mirrin had eased the crush by sitting outside the lip of the frosted dugout, but Iceman changed spots with Mirrin an hour into their vigil after Cannonball noticed that her teeth were chattering and she was now half-squashed between Havok and Jean and gingerly trying to avoid contact with the icy walls. 

One of the least glamorous parts of stakeouts was the waiting, Iceman mused as he made himself comfortable in the spot Mirrin had vacated and checked to make sure that the ice was still of the proper depth. It was the part that the cop shows always skipped past - hours passed during a single commercial break or else the cops got unreasonably lucky and just stumbled across their perp. 

It was no less boring for superheroes. Normally, even he could appreciate the companionable silences that went along with waiting for something somewhere. But in this case Bobby was quite sure that any long silence would be an open invitation for someone to start brooding. Most likely Scott, and they needed him at his most sharp.

Mirrin, probably inadvertently, had provided the necessary distraction for the first hour. Maybe not inadvertently, Bobby corrected himself, since she had been trained as a soldier and probably understood the delicacies of morale better than most even just by virtue of being a telepath. Regardless of her motivations, Mirrin passed the hour by pretending that she wasn't freezing cold from sitting next to an igloo and instead getting Sam to point out the various constellations (that were invisible in her own time's polluted night sky) to her. Sam wasn't much for stargazing and needed the others to help him out. Scott and Alex had proven fairly adept at both identifying constellations and describing where they would be in the Southern Hemisphere's sky. 

But Bobby knew he couldn't be that subtle. Or maybe just not that kind of subtle. His kind of distraction was the more pedestrian kind, all the more effective because it was all the less obvious for it being out in the open. And good old Alex had just left him an opening he could drive a Chevy through.

"Oh my god, look, Cannonball," Bobby stage-whispered, poking his younger teammate - who had seemingly been hypnotized by the play of the moon on the gently waved water - and gestured behind them. "It's a Summers love nest."

"Ah dunno Iceman," was the cautioning reply. Sam really wasn't sure he wanted to be Bobby's sidekick if Bobby was going to be picking on Scott and Jean just about now. "Ah learned never to poke fun at people who are naturally armed while your back is to them." He didn't turn around, instead taking another deep breath of the ocean air. Between the water and the moon and the air that smelled of salt and sand (and nothing like dead bodies), it was almost enough to calm him down, if not enough to make him forget why he was here. 

"You learned that from Cable. Who is, for your information, a Summers," Iceman pointed out helpfully. He could feel Sam slipping into the sort of mood that invited deep reflection, which in the X-Men's case meant angst. "That makes it tainted information."  
  
Giving in to both Bobby and the temptation that he had been studiously trying to ignore in favor of the tide, Sam snuck a look over his shoulder. He was rewarded by seeing Alex with his arms cautiously around Mirrin, who had her knees drawn up to her chest and was trying not to lean her head too heavily into the crook of Alex's neck as he generated gentle plasma waves to warm her up. Alex looked concerned, Sam decided, but whether it was for Mirrin's comfort or for his own life should Mirrin get the wrong idea about his actions, Sam wasn't sure. It was an oddly affectionate tableau; Mirrin and Alex provided a sort of mirror image to Jean and Scott, who had somehow managed to make not-quite-cuddling look completely platonic. 

"Ah dunno," Sam repeated as he turned back to Bobby. "Seein' as right now, all three Summers men have got a lady to attend to and the two of us are sittin' out here with each other."

A murmur of protest came from behind them and Sam wasn't sure who had made it.

"You've got the better of the deal," Bobby replied. "Think about it - ruthless warrior from the future, formerly evil cosmic avatar - hi, Jean - and probably homicidal mercenary. I'd go with me any day."

"And how often do you do just that?" Jean asked dryly from the comfort of Scott's loose embrace. 

"Play nice," Havok chided without rancor. 

"Hey, I spent formative years as the only girl on campus. That's akin to being raised by wolves," Jean said, ignoring the murmur of protest from her husband. 

Alex shook his head sadly. "And I used to wonder what I was missing." Looking down at the young woman in his arms, he tried not to shift and he desperately hoped that his mental shields were holding. Of course, if Ororo's gentle teasing over the past few weeks was any indication, then it really didn't matter if he was keeping his thoughts about Mirrin to himself. "You okay down there?"

Mirrin nodded into his shoulder. "I don't know why I'm so affected by the cold. I've been through worse in my own time. This one, too." 

"You're tired and you're stressed and we haven't eaten in hours and there's no adrenaline high to distract you," he reasoned, arms reflexively tightening when Mirrin shuddered. Embarrassed, he loosened them immediately and wished he could risk turning up his plasma heat any more than it was. But that would defeat the purpose of the igloo, not to mention possibly hurting Mirrin. "When we get home, you should finally swallow your pride and get into the Sh'iar fabricator for a new uniform. They're insulated."

"Probably," she agreed reluctantly. 

From the entry to the igloo, Bobby watched as the four occupants fell into a contemplative silence. It wasn't a brooding silence, so he let it be. Instead, he turned forward again and watched some birds float in the water. He didn't feel the need to check his watch, so he had no idea how long he had been watching the birds sleep when something caught the corner of his eye. 

"Cannonball, you see something on the horizon?" he asked as he pointed. 

Squinting, Cannonball finally shook his head. "Ah can't tell. We have binoculars, right?"

"Here they are," Cyclops said as he disentangled himself from Jean to fish them out of his pack. 

"Well," Iceman finally sighed after a couple of minutes fiddling with the infrared sensor on the binoculars. "That still doesn't answer my question about how he keeps his solid metal hide from sinking such a rickety little boat, but it's them. You can pick up the glow of his eye with this thing."

The occupants of the igloo all sat up. The time for peace and rest had passed. 

"That's good, 'cuz the remote heat sensor's pickin' up something behind us," Cannonball reported as he squinted to see which of the display's lights were starting to dance. "Ah don't think it's an animal."

"I guess this answers the question about how long Cable and Domino were on the loose before they were captured," Cyclops ground out as he tried to shift into a kneeling position in the suddenly way-too-small dugout. "Iceman, how far out are they and what's their ETA?"

"A kilometer, I'd guess," Iceman reported. "Maybe a little more. The wake from the boat is gone. It looks like Cable's cut engines and he's moving them in telekinetically."

#_I can't reach him_,# Jean said to Cyclops over their telepathic link as she worked with Mirrin to set up a group-wide connection. Silence had just become golden. #_He's got Domino and himself hidden in a psionic shield. I'm bouncing off._#

Cannonball pulled a small mirror out of his utility belt and angled it. "Ah'm counting at least a dozen somethings right by the treeline," he announced out loud before feeling the pin-prick that was Phoenix attaching a telepathic tether. _There could be more, but I can't see that well. They're in from the edge of the trees a few feet, but they're not doing anything else to hide themselves._

*_We can't bring them in unawares_,* Havok said to Cyclops as he waited for Mirrin to move away enough for him to move into a crouch. *_Either Mirrin or Cannonball are going to have to go out to them and warn them. We could agree to meet up in a new place, but I have no idea what's defensible around here._*

Mirrin opened up her pack and attached the plasma pistol she had taken from Nathan's hideout to the holster on her thigh. Splaying her fingers, she watched as the metal bands from her bracelets stretched to cover the backs of her hands and then wiggled her fingers. Looking up, she saw that Havok was watching her hands in rapt fascination. 

*_One of the other islands_,* Cyclops replied after considering the other options. *_We have to fall back until we're all on the same page. We also should figure out whether that Kurioon squad is out there because of us, because of Cable and Domino, or just out on a normal patrol_.*

#_A dozen is too many to be a normal patrol_,# Mirrin said. #_They're here either because they've picked us up or because they've got Dayspring on visual. He knows how to avoid tripping their alarms along the border._#

Jean moved to join Cannonball and Iceman outside the igloo. There was very little space hidden by the rocks that was not taken up by the igloo and she motioned for the other three to stay inside until they were ready to move.

*_Do you have any reference points on any of the other islands?_* Cyclops asked Mirrin. *_You can 'port us there and Cannonball can fly out to Cable and lead them to us_.*

But Mirrin shook her head in response. #_I've not been to any of the other islands._#

*_I have_,* Cannonball spoke up. *_Take one from me_,* he told Mirrin, not wanting to think about how many times today he had gone back and forth between hating this woman and trusting her enough to raid his memories. He felt the gentle touch that he now knew was Mirrin parting his shields. 

#_I have one_,# Mirrin said after a moment. #_The south coast of the nearest island. Stay in contact with me and I'll lead you to us._#

*_You're going to be a target from the moment you take off_,* Cyclops warned Cannonball. *_We don't know what they've got so we don't know if your blast field will protect you. If there's a problem, you tell Mirrin and she'll grab you three. No heroics and **don't** let Cable convince you otherwise. I don't care if he knows what we're up against. Understood?_*

*_Yes, sir,_* he confirmed as he pulled his goggles out of his utility belt. 

*_Havok, you and Jean set up a decoy so that Cannonball's got a chance of getting out of range of their weaponry,_* Cyclops continued. *_We've got a few grenades; Jean, you float them out in the opposite direction of where Cannonball's headed and Havok, you'll light them up. Okay?_*

#_Okay,_# Jean answered for the both of them. She crept forward a few inches to see how far out she could hold the grenades while still allowing Alex a clear shot at them. 

*_Iceman, put up a wall so that we have some freedom of movement out there. Mirrin, make sure you don't lose Cannonball and stay with me. Let's go, people._*

The ice wall was easily two meters tall and incorporated enough sand to be assured that both infrared and heat sensors would be affected. Jean floated the grenades out to three separate points, each further away from the group than the last, and gave a command simultaneously to both Havok and Cannonball. As the first grenade exploded, Cannonball took off in the opposite direction and was out to sea before the second and third clusters exploded. 

As soon as the last grenade went off, the five remaining X-Men gathered around Mirrin and the group disappeared. 

*** 

Domino went over their weapons more to keep herself busy than anything else. Nate was using his telekinesis to steer the boat and he was using his telepathy to shield them from the Kurioon and it was simple survival skills on Domino's part to keep herself from distracting him. 

The weapons check didn't take long. They had their main plasma guns, a backup for each of them, and some spare cartridges. Other than that, it was all plastics and a couple of signal disruptors. Nate was sure that nothing else they had access to would be of any use. While it was one thing for the X-Men not to be in a position to adequately arm themselves, it was another thing entirely if Nate couldn't find anything of use in his own stash of weapons. It wasn't a comforting feeling. 

They had been gone from New York for two days, all of which had been spent in traveling most of the way around the globe. Domino wasn't sure where Nate had gotten the information that had led him to this tropical paradise-cum-holocaust birthplace, but she knew where he hadn't. When Domino had asked if they were going to contact Mirrin before they left, Nate had curtly replied that she didn't need to know everything that they were doing. 

Twenty years of experience in dealing with Nathan had convinced Domino that there was nothing positive to be gained by pointing out to him that he couldn't very well demand that people not keep secrets from him when he persisted in doing the exact same thing. 

She kept repeating that to herself whenever her inner voice - the annoying one posing as her long-dead conscience, the one that had kept her with X-Force for longer than she would have liked - pointed out that perhaps she was just enjoying it a little too much that Nate still trusted her more than he trusted Mirrin. The voice also told her that perhaps Nate just trusted her to believe his rather loose interpretations of the truth more than Mirrin would. 

"Let me have the night-viewers?" Domino asked Cable, preferring a sudden dunking into the water rather than listening to her inner voice any further. "I want to see where you're driving us."

It took Domino a few minutes to fiddle with the binoculars. She knew better than to put them to her eyes right away; the difference in correction for each of Nathan's eyes on account of his T-O meant that impatience in re-adjusting the viewers would do nothing but assure a headache. 

Reasonably sure that the binoculars were now safe, Domino raised them to her own eyes and looked for the coast. Her vision was caught by something in motion, something moving too slowly to be a night-flying bird. She trained the binoculars on the object and switched to heat-sensors. Nothing. Nothing living, at any rate. But whatever it was, it was moving too slowly and too smoothly to be jet-powered. It was almost as if it were being moved telekinetically... 

"Cut your engines, Nate," Domino ordered abruptly. "We've got a problem."

"The boat stilled in the water. "What is it?"

"There's something over there moving like it shouldn't. Not a bird and not a plane and it doesn't register on the heat-scan," she explained. 

"I can drop our shield to take a look," Cable considered. "But if it's not..."

Whatever Cable was going to say was drowned out by the not-that-distant noise of an explosion. Then another. And just when Cable and Domino exchanged shocked expressions, a third. 

"The party's starting without us. Which is odd, considering that you promised that it was going to be a party of two," Domino said with some sarcasm as she double-checked that she had re-sealed all of the waterproof seals on their weapons cache. Just in case Nate's foolproof information turned out to be a little less than foolproof. Just in case they had to swim.

There was another explosion and at the shore, Cable could see the distinctive flash of plasma weapons being discharged in darkness. "The Kurioon soldiers are shooting at something. At whatever those explosions were... They stopped shooting. Domino, give me the binoculars." He held out his hand blindly, but when Domino didn't hand them over, he turned. She still had them up to her eyes and was watching something in the opposite direction of the explosions. "Dom?"

"What the fuck?" she asked, utter bewilderment coloring her voice.

"What is it?"

"Cannonball."

"A cannonball?" Cable asked in confusion. What would the Kurioon be doing with a cannon on an otherwise uninhabited island?

"Not a cannonball, Nate. Sam. Our Cannonball."

***

http://www.geocities.com/nikimarzione/ 


	21. FP 21: Dissonance

Future Pluperfect: Chapter 21 

* * *

Textual Poaching Alert: Marvel owns everyone but Mirrin, although Social Services would have stripped custody long ago...

* * *

Sam kept close to the water as he flew, Cable having taught him long ago that not only were low-flying targets harder to hit, but also that the more you acted like a bird the more you were likely to get mistaken for one. 

Not that he expected to be confused for waterfowl by either of the occupants of the boat he was blasting towards. 

Sam did his best to keep his heart out of his throat as the distance to the boat evaporated and the forms that from a distance were unrecognizable turned into Cable and Domino. Alive. 

Domino had binoculars trained on him, he could see that much already. Cable was looking off in the direction of the distraction Phoenix and Havok had set up. He could see Domino hand off the night viewers to Cable, whose body language was achingly, wonderfully familiar - Domino must have recognized him and Cable didn't believe her when she told him. 

#_Cannonball, what the **flonq** are you doing here?_# Cable's mindvoice grated in Sam's head, ringing like a marble in a metal bucket. #_And who is with you?_#

Sam was at the boat before he could reply. "Start the motor and turn the boat towards that island," he ordered, too shaken to exchange greetings and, suddenly, too angry to automatically defer to two people he'd normally follow to the ends of the universe and beyond. How _dare_ they go off and get killed simply because they were too sure of themselves. That was a rookie mistake, one they had driven out of X-Force through pure exhaustion. How _dare_ they not practice what they preached. "We'll meet up with the team on the south side. You might as well turn the light on, Ah doubt you'll be able to see the shore otherwise."

Cable must have been surprised; he actually followed orders. The boat was put into a sharp turn and the propeller was lowered to the water already humming. 

Domino looked distinctly pissed off, but whatever she was going to say was cut off by Cable suddenly breaking out into a streak of what was probably Askani invective.

"Spill it, Cannonball," she barked out after he was finished. "You know what's going on and Nate just found out. He's busy arguing with telepaths; that leaves you. Start talking."

"Ah'm here with Mirrin, Phoenix, Cyclops, Havok, and Iceman," Sam replied evenly as he kept up with the accelerating boat, refusing to be intimidated. "And we're here to find out why y'all snuck off like you did."

"I didn't realize cooperation with the X-Men was enforced by search party," Domino bit out, her voice raised louder than was necessary to be heard over the boat motor. "Did we miss curfew? Wander off without our leash? When did you stop trusting us, Cannonball?"

"Since you fucked up, Ma'am," Sam answered coldly. "Ah don't trust hypocrites."

"What's _that_ supposed to mean?" she asked incredulously. 

"What's the second rule of fightin' solo, Domino?" Sam asked mockingly in return, his voice made harsher by his need to shout as well as by his inability to keep a rein on his emotions. Cable's shields were probably being battered with his fear and anger. 

"We didn't pick a fight we couldn't win. We picked a fight the X-Men weren't going to win," she retorted. 

They were almost at the island and Cyclops was standing on the beach waiting for them, small torch in his hand and his visor glowing sharply in the darkness.

"Well, guess what, you picked wrong," he said, and then flew ahead so that Domino couldn't reply. 

"What the hell was that all about," Domino asked Cable after Cannonball had blasted away and disappeared into the pitch black. Cable didn't answer. "Nate?"

"Mirrin won't say," Cable finally replied as they jumped out of the boat into knee-deep water. He waved briefly to Cyclops. "She's leaving Scott to do the dirty work, apparently."

"Cable, Domino," Cyclops said sourly by way of greeting. "So nice of you to join us." His voice sounded harsh, belying the calm words.

Cable watched his father closely. Scott had his shields down so tight he was gritting his teeth with the effort, but his emotions were so strong that he was leaking regardless. 

Normally when he had done something Slym didn't agree with, Nathan mused as they pulled the boat ashore, his father radiated frustration and irritation and not the mixture of relief and fury that was coming through his shields now. Whatever Mirrin had brought the X-Men here to undo - and while Mirrin wouldn't even answer his telepathic questions, he was sure that that was what was happening here - it had to have been enough to crack his father's normally cool façade. 

Domino picked her pack up from the boat floor and fished around the exterior pocket for the flashlight before shouldering the pack. Her first inclination would have been to light into Cyclops for pulling power games, but Nate's silence was telling. There was nothing but curiosity coming through the psi-link, not even a trace of anger from Nathan that their supposedly secret mission had turned out to be anything but. And the way Sam had reacted... the way Cyclops was reacting now that they were close enough for him to lash out at them in that infuriatingly calm way of his... Something was going on and the best way to find out was to stay quiet and watch and listen. 

"You can hide the boat over there," Cyclops said, pulling his flashlight out of his utility belt and aiming it at a leafy area near the shore. "I don't think anybody will come looking for it, but..." 

Cable shouldered his pack and then lifted the boat telekinetically and floated it to where the light shone. It fit partially under the flora cover. 

Cyclops pocketed his flashlight as Cable pulled out his own. "Let's go. We've found a place to set up camp in a clearing through the trees."

The three walked in silence through the woods, Cyclops leading the way with his torch. After about ten minutes of careful progress, they broke into open ground and saw the rest of the team. 

"Ah, the guests of honor!" Iceman exclaimed from his spot on the ground. "I guess we can now draw lots to see who's going to kill monkeys and go fish in the dark for dinner."

The joke failed to break the tension that even the headblind could see building up among the group. 

Jean was picking up twigs and other obstacles that littered their small space, Bobby was dropping ice cubes into a container of what was probably purified water, and Sam was standing silently - and sullenly - across the clearing from the newly arrived trio. 

Cable looked around for Mirrin. He found her crouched on the ground next to Havok, who was apparently starting a small campfire. He knew she could feel his stare, but she didn't look up, instead putting all of her focus into re-arranging the pile of driftwood and dead branches. 

Mirrin wasn't talking to him, but Nathan thought he knew why she was reacting as she was. He somewhat doubted that she was angry that she had been left behind - Mirrin was a veteran at guerilla warfare and knew that no one gets to go on all of the missions; had the mission gone as planned, Cable knew she wouldn't have cared that she was not along. Instead, he suspected that Mirrin was worried that he was still acting the way he had when she had left his younger self in the future. He had been crazy with grief after Aliya had died and had pushed himself harder than he should have, harder than was good for either himself or his clan. Mirrin was worried, Nathan realized, that she was going to have to protect him not only from the Kurioon but also from himself. 

"Are we all going to stare at each other, or is someone going to tell us what's going on?" Domino finally asked as she put her pack down on the ground next to a fallen tree.

"Your mission was unsuccessful," Jean explained shortly. Talking with the formerly dead was something you got used to as an X-Man, but while it was always more emotional when it was someone you were especially close to, this... this was the first time Jean had had to talk to someone who had come back from the dead and didn't know that they had died in the first place. The avalanche of emotion was entirely one-sided and the relief purely her own. And Nathan being who he was, Jean knew that she couldn't just run over and hug him and let fall the tears that were currently blurring her vision. He had reacted so stoically with all of their previous reunions, she didn't know if he could understand.

"_Was_ unsuccessful," Domino repeated with a nod. She really didn't want to think on _how_ unsuccessful the mission had to be for the X-Men to have to come for them. "So how far back in the past is this for you people?"

"A few days," Havok answered calmly as he started the campfire with a fingertip of plasma. "We don't know what time it is now, so we can't give you a precise answer."

"What _do_ you know?" Domino asked, a little causticity coloring her words. She knew they were all faking their perfect composure and it pissed her off more than the abrupt change of plans. The casual routine was straight out of Interrogation 101 and Domino was slightly offended that they actually thought it would work. 

"It took us hours to realize that something had happened to you," Cyclops replied curtly from behind them. He used an eye blast to dig a small hole in the dirt ground and placed the base of the torch in it. "It took us the better part of a day to use three superhero teams' resources to figure out where the hell you two were. It took three telepaths to blindly stumble upon your traces in the astral plane and find out _what_ had happened to you. And it's been two days in preparation and execution for us to end up here. All because you had to go play Lone Ranger, Nathan."

"General Custer is more like it," Iceman muttered loud enough for everyone to hear. 

Cable didn't move for a moment, and then he nodded and took a step forward, conceding that he had acted in error even if he wasn't confessing to anything in particular. "The nest of the Kurioon is on the next island. Destroying it completely is impossible; we weren't even going to try. This was just a reconnaissance mission."

"Why were you being so secretive about it, then?" Havok asked sharply, less than an accusation but making it clear that it was more than idle curiosity. "You didn't have to leave an itinerary, you know, but a forwarding address would have been nice. We all know how good you are at what you do; you don't have to go proving to us how well you can disappear."

"I didn't want to bring a team in here and I didn't think you'd react well to me calling and saying that Domino and I were going into the heart of the Kurioon for a look-see and please don't follow us," Cable answered calmly as he sat down on a log behind Jean, shifting over so that Domino could share it with him. 

"How did you figure out that this was the nest?" Cyclops asked, sounding very much like the leader whose soldier had gone AWOL and not the father whose son had been decapitated on a beach. "And having found out, why the hell didn't you say anything?"

"I wanted to come to you with as much information as possible," Cable replied, the explanation sounding a little weak even to his ears. He could feel Domino's snort of derision through the psi-link. "If I had just e-mailed you the coordinates, there would have been a committee meeting on whether to show up here and investigate and it's too dangerous for an X-Men field trip."

"Which is, of course, what it turned out to be," Cyclops pointed out. "Complete with campfire and sleeping bags," he added, sarcasm making his words sound clipped and harsh.

"I hadn't planned on getting us killed," Cable answered peevishly.

Cable knew this was part of the routine, but he still didn't like it. Working with a chronal teleporter like Mirrin was meant that there was a certain kind of cognitive dissonance that accompanied any type of 'do-over' - everyone wanted a chance to unmake all of their mistakes, but most people were unprepared to handle the situation once it presented itself. Coming to terms with what is as opposed to what once was (or once could have been) didn't happen automatically. 

Rachel had known this - 'what is, is' was the Askani rallying cry for just this reason. And while Nathan knew that his own experiences had sped up the acceptance process for himself, he also knew that it would take a little longer for everyone else. It was a frustrating process to have to be the focus of, however, and Nathan was nothing if not uncomfortable with emotional outpourings. 

There was quiet for a long moment, the only noise the crackling of the fire and the distant sounds of night in a forest.

"It's too dangerous for us, but not for you and Domino," Jean summarized quietly, handing cups of water to both Cable and Domino, the former of who looked at her carefully. Jean was always at her most dangerous when she was quiet. "We're not amateurs."

"I know that... The danger wasn't in the mission, it was in the location," Nathan sighed. "The more people, the more complicated it gets. I really just wanted to get in and get out with something that might give us a better chance... And yes, I know I completely defeated the purpose."

"Yet that doesn't..."

"You didn't say how you knew this was the spot," Havok interrupted his brother's retort as he watched Mirrin out of the corner of his eye. She was being eerily silent, the sort of silent he would have associated with Cable had this been back in the days when X-Factor had to cross paths with X-Force. 

"Satellite photographs. From back before the nest's defense net could get anywhere," Cable said with a shrug. It was a neutral enough topic. "I had a computer program running for about a week to cross-reference several feeds." 

"Did you get anything other than the location?" Cyclops asked. 

"No. Just that it was small enough that I thought Domino and I could handle it," Cable replied, handing his empty cup back to Jean. "Normally, the Kurioon nests are much more spread out and fortified. There should have been guard patrols and alarms."

"There might have been," Iceman spoke up. "We don't know what happened between when you arrived and when you... died. Mirrin and Cannonball didn't trip any alarms that we knew about and they were out and about..."

"It doesn't really matter, does it?" Cannonball asked rhetorically. He hadn't spoken a word since Cable and Domino had arrived and Cable had almost forgotten that he was there. Almost. "Somehow they knew you were there and dealt with you. There were no signs of struggle anywhere. You two got caught real quickly."

"That's why I wanted to be there in the first place," Cable explained, mindful of how distraught Sam had been earlier and how likely he was still to be set off by one wrong word. "The Kurioon is powerful, but things shouldn't be as easy for them as they have been. Especially after you took out that telepath in Lebanon. The Kurioon act. They don't react and they certainly don't anticipate. Yet they've been progressing almost at will. I had to know why before it cost us something more than we could pay."

"So you set yourself and Domino up as a test case to see whether it was them bein' strong or us bein' weak?" Cannonball asked, voice rising with each word. "Ah know you don't care about us, but couldn't you be nicer to Dom than to take her along on a probable suicide mission without a backup?" With that, he turned and stormed off into the forest. 

"Oath," Cable muttered, standing up suddenly and waving his hand to indicate that he didn't want Domino to follow. Sam was angry with them both for slightly different reasons and it was better to focus on those differences. Domino could make her own peace with Sam later. He moved briskly across the camp towards where Sam had disappeared into the forest. "Sam!"

"Leave him be," Mirrin said in Askani, speaking her first words of the reunion as she stood up to block his path. She had not budged from her spot next to the fire, even though her pack was sitting next to Havok's. 

Nathan looked down at his childhood friend and clanmate. The fire at their feet made her brown eyes shine, the effect only adding to the menace in her voice. "Let me go, Ay'el," he ordered, peeling her hand off his arm. 

"You've done enough damage, Dayspring," she said resolutely, even as she allowed him to remove her hand. "Unless you're sure that you can fix what's wrong without making it worse first, let him be."

"He needs to vent his anger," he replied, irritated that Mirrin thought she could read Sam more clearly than he could. "I can stand there and take the abuse."

"_I_ need to vent my anger," Mirrin corrected sharply. "He needs to vent his _grief_. Samuel had no chance to mourn you and Domino. He had to be strong because he knew that was the only way to get you back. He doesn't want you to see him while he's weak."

Nathan looked thoughtfully at Mirrin, but wasn't about to concede the point just yet. "Since when are you his protector?" 

Mirrin glared up at Nathan and he could feel her pushing against his mental shields. A memory passed through where she had poked. A memory of Sam reacting to the two dead, mutilated bodies lying on a sunny beach. Nathan flinched faintly, a mere twitch, but Mirrin pounced. 

"He is not Askani," she growled quietly. "He is a boy pretending to be a man and this is not the time to temper weapons, but instead to make sure that what you have is at its best. He is not Askani and he cannot accept 'what is, is' without struggle. Allow him that struggle - as you have let the others."

Nathan closed his eyes and nodded, finally conceding. He had never forgotten how Sam looked up to him, no more than he had ever forgotten that Sam had somehow forged a place for himself in Nathan's own closely guarded heart. What he did still forget, however, was that Sam was still a young man who had not been raised on the run. The tough love and macho affection that was commonplace among soldiers who had lost enough to be wary (and not enough to lose all faith) was acquired for Sam, not inherent. Sam could speak the parts, but they weren't in his voice. 

"So that means I have to stand here instead and let you vent your anger?" Nathan asked, not kindly. He had weathered the storm of his parents without having to give too much away; Mirrin was bound to cut much deeper - and much closer to the truth - with her words. "You were successful. You did your job and I am most thankful, especially for you saving Domino." 

"I am your champion and I am your clanmate," Mirrin said, brushing off his thanks with an angry wave of a metal-bound hand. "Saving your life is my duty and my honor. But I am also your friend, or so you keep telling me. We have held each other's lifeblood in our hands and yet you made your move by first leaving me behind."

Nathan sighed. "I don't _need_ a champion and it was _because_ I am your clan leader and especially because I am your friend that I left you behind." 

"You flonqing moron," Mirrin hissed, realization dawning suddenly. "I came here-and-now to protect you from the Kurioon. Not drive you into their arms out of some stupid attempt at reparation for a life-debt you don't owe me. We both know I die there-and-then. That means I survive this little jaunt to your native here-and-now to return to the Clan Chosen. _I don't know if you do._

"Don't leave your blood on my hands, Nat'an," Mirrin sighed, the fight suddenly leaving her. "I am sorry if you feel mine is upon yours. Please."

The pointed reminders of Mirrin's own - completed - fate weighed heavily on Nathan's heart. He looked around at the group, all of whose attention was squarely on them. "Show's over, folks," he ground out in English. "Where are Havok and Domino?" 

"Domino didn't feel comfortable with our thoroughness in scouting for a campsite and wanted to look around," Bobby reported. "She muttered something about not trusting the birds not to be spies - which is a good thing, considering Mirrin and Cannonball's experiences - and went off. Havok's looking for Cannonball."

"Wouldn't it have been better to send a telepath?" Mirrin asked as she went over to where her pack had been left. 

"The two of you were busy and not bothering to shield adequately, so Jean had to," Cyclops replied, frowning. "Havok sees well enough in the dark."

"He's found him," Jean spoke up. She had her hands to her temples, either in concentration or to attempt to fend off a headache. "They're close by and in no danger. Domino's on her way back."

"And she's pissed," Nathan sighed, mostly to himself. The psi-link was ringing.

"Uh-oh," Iceman said. "I hope it's at you."

"Don't worry, it is." 

***

The klaxon sounded at four-thirty in the morning. "Briefin' room on the double, folks," Wolverine's voice growled over the building-wide intercom. "Kurioon's not waitin' to see the results of the Summers' family picnic."

Five minutes later, the Ready Room was occupied, the coffee machine was almost done percolating, and the video-conferencing screen was dropped down. Long ago, Professor Xavier had realized that evil rarely struck during regular business hours and had prepared the X-Men's facilities accordingly. 

"That satellite the Avengers are letting us... borrow... has turned up some heavy mobilizing of _something_ in a remote part of the Sudan," Nightcrawler's voice said through the speakers as the screen showed both a topological map as well as the satellite images. The photos were fuzzy, although troop formations could be recognized. "What it is, we do not know, but I cannot imagine that it would be Harvesters. There is no population center anywhere nearby. It's a five-hundred kilometer trip to the nearest significant water source."

"Perhaps they are setting up a base camp," Storm suggested thoughtfully. She had chosen to run the meeting from her regular seat - on one of the sides, adjacent to Cyclops' place at the head of the table - and belatedly understood the problems in catching everyone's eyes. In her previous stint as head of the X-Men, conferences had taken place around a smaller, round table. _Such small things,_ she mused to herself.

"In preparation for what?" Psylocke asked, biting into a banana. 

"The reign of Apocalypse," Beast answered ominously. "It would not be the first time one of our enemies made such elaborate plans for the future."

"Can we stop it?" Rogue asked as she reached for an apple. 

"Can we afford not to try?" Nightcrawler asked in return. "We can't wait around for Cyclops and his team to return with Cable. Our best chance to stop the Kurioon is to attack it early."

"We're still short on manpower," Archangel pointed out, looking around the room. "Leaving aside that our most experienced fighters - excepting Wolverine - are out of our time as well as out of our reach, we're operating with a skeleton crew."

"Captain Britain's and Meggan's powers being tied to their location make them less-than-suitable to aid you," Nightcrawler said. "And it would be unfair to leave Excalibur in a position where it could not defend its homeland in case of attack, but Colossus, Shadowcat, and myself are available to you. We have discussed this already." 

"Then we should depart immediately," Storm announced. Kurt was right and delaying would not only mean more trouble once they arrived, but also more doubts on the way there. She knew her temporary team felt that they were the 'junior varsity' X-Men and that crisis of confidence could not be allowed to fester. "Since the Blackbird is not at our disposal, we shall have to use one of the mini-jets and that will cost us both in time and in defenses. We should be arriving at Muir Island in approximately six hours. We can discuss any changes en route."

"Excalibur out, then," Nightcrawler said by way of agreement and the screen went dark.

"Ten minutes should be sufficient to retrieve your packs as well as to find something more substantial than breakfast fare in the kitchen to bring to eat on the plane," Storm told her team as she stood up. "I do not know what sort of time we will have once we arrive in Scotland and it would be foolish to allow something so basic as nourishment to lapse."

"Not as foolish as havin' to eat whatever's in Excalibur's fridge," Wolverine observed as he headed for the door.

Fifteen minutes later, the pre-flight check was concluded and the mini-jet taxied out of the hangar. 

***

back to the index


	22. FP 22: Forgiven, Not Forgotten

Future Pluperfect: Chapter 22 

* * *

Textual Poaching Alert: Marvel owns everyone but Mirrin, although Social Services would have stripped custody long ago...

* * *

Alex wasn't sure why he had volunteered to chase after Sam. He probably had the least of a relationship with the young man out of all those present, and he was the only irregular member of the X-Men currently not having it out with Cable... perhaps that was why. Because he was the most insistent on leading a perfectly normal life and was thus the best suited to explain to Sam that he was reacting perfectly normally. 

Of course, considering how eerily easily Sam seemed to fall into the role of a professional soldier, Alex hadn't been sure when he had headed off that Sam would be _relieved_ by the fact that he was reacting perfectly normally. Alex fervently hoped that there was enough little boy left in Sam to comfort because he was utterly unprepared to give soldierly advice. He hadn't been able to do with X-Factor and civilian life certainly hadn't sharpened his General Patton impression. He traipsed through the woods as Alex, not as Havok. 

And so it was Alex who had found Sam (and thankfully not Cannonball) a few minutes earlier. Alex had thus been a silent witness to the tail end of Sam's quiet sniffling and one escaped sob before he announced his presence by stepping on a twig. There was no point in challenging what was undoubtedly Sam's currently very fragile dignity by giving any sign that he had seen anything, however. 

"Go away, Havok," Sam growled out into the darkness. He couldn't quite see who it was who had come to stand next to him, but the footfalls sounded too heavy to be female, Cable's and Cyclops's eyes glowed in the dark, and Sam somewhat doubted that Iceman could keep his mouth shut long enough to stand there. And he wouldn't still be breathing had it been Kurioon.

"Sorry, Cannonball," Alex said, emphasizing the codename, "but in case you've forgotten, we're in enemy territory. You don't get to go off and brood by yourself. I won't say anything; I'll just be your brooding bodyguard."

A few meters away, Sam hunkered down on the log he was sitting on in grudging acceptance of Alex's presence. He didn't want anyone hovering over him, even if it was only Alex and even if he knew that he really shouldn't be wandering around by himself. Mostly because Sam didn't want to get caught crying and was idly thankful that Alex hadn't brought any light with him and thus couldn't see his tear-streaked face. 

Trying to make wiping his eyes dry look like he was rubbing his face in exhaustion, Sam sat silently until Alex came and sat down on the other end of the log. Eyes adjusted to the darkness, Sam could see Alex fairly well and he didn't have that 'let's talk' posture about him. In fact, he just looked tired. So, perversely, that's when Sam felt like talking. 

"Ah'm over-reactin', aren't Ah?" he asked casually (at least he hoped it was casually). "Ah'm supposed to be a big boy now and not act like a little kid."

"Well, the storming off was borderline melodramatic," Alex agreed, not taking his elbows off his knees or his gaze off of the dark ground. "But that may have been because it was right out of a bad horror movie - good guy goes off by himself into unknown danger and becomes lunch and all. But if you're looking for me to be critical of you being pissed off, however, I can't oblige you. Everyone else was pissed off, too."

"Ah noticed," Sam said, kicking at a plant by his foot. 

"Kind of hard not to, I suppose. But you did miss the latest installment of This Week in Askani Guilt Trips," Alex said bemusedly. "I don't know what the two of them did to each other in the future, but they certainly seem to be able to whip it out and flay the other with it at a moment's notice."

"How do you know it's guilt?" Sam asked, still kicking at the leafy plant. "They could be gettin' into it over anything. Mirrin was pretty ticked that Cable and Domino left her behind, remember."

"One of the girls I dated in college was into Kabuki theatre," Alex replied by way of explanation. "Since the sum total of my Japanese involves identifying food in a sushi bar and 'kamikaze', I got real good at following the plot without understanding the language. If you watch Nathan and Mirrin, you can tell by the hand waving and the sudden crestfallen expressions that it's guilt. Of course, genetics being what they are, the odds of it being anything else were probably pretty slim."

"_You_ don't seem so riddled with Summers Angst," Sam offered. 

"You all have a _name_ for it?" Alex asked, a little horrified. "I should have expected. But no, I'm not. I'm supposed to be the normal one in the family, remember? Although considering that I'm running around in a skinsuit fighting evil in addition to the already standing dysfunctional relationship with the former Madelyne Pryor, those differences are rapidly dwindling." 

Alex hoped he had done a better job than he thought he had at keeping the sudden swell of bitterness out of his voice. He knew where the thoughts had come from - Sam's backhanded compliment aside, he was a Summers and brooding was an active hobby - but why they had burped up now... 

"Just don't act all casual when you come back from the dead next time," Sam suggested, sounding brittle. He kicked the plant - which fortunately seemed not to be affected by Sam's attention - again. 

"And they'll be a next time, too," Alex added, consciously trying to sound more cheerful. He was there to keep Sam from moping - even if he had said otherwise - and it would do no good to start brooding himself. He could do that on his own time. 

"Of course. You can't fight heredity," Sam agreed, and then frowned. "Ah sound like a Rogaine ad."

"You're a child of the television age," Alex comforted. 

"And you're not?" Sam stopped kicking the plant. 

"I turned the volume off during commercials," Alex countered. "My pop culture references are of a more rarified type."

"Snob." He kicked the plant again. 

"I prefer 'cultural elitist'," Alex corrected. "Stop kicking that poor plant." 

"Ah'm gettin' out my aggressions," Sam explained, kicking the plant once more just to be contrary. "Ah can't kick _him_."

"You could," Alex corrected. "I just don't think it would be wise. Although if we empty out the bucket we're using to hold the clean water, we could probably carry you home... So, go ahead, go kick Cable."

Sam made a face at Alex, certain that he could be seen. "Ah don't know why Ah'm so upset _this_ time," Sam said after a pause. "Ah mean, it's not like this is the first time Cable's up and gone without sayin' anything and then come back expectin' everyone to treat him like he was just off gettin' coffee. Probably not the first time he's been doin' something real stupid in the interim, too."

"Undoubtedly," Alex agreed. "But this is the first time you've ever had to confront _proof_ that he did something amazingly stupid. Well, stupid in a life-threatening way, as opposed to doing something stupid and one of _us_ wanting to kill him." 

Sam chuckled mirthlessly. "Ah think Ah'd be okay if Cable'd just stop makin' me feel like such an idiot for caring about what happens to him. He's been... there for me - Domino, too - and Ah don't do that to him."

Alex sensed Sam had more to say, so he just nodded and hoped that Sam could see him do so. 

"Ah was so angry at him. He had me so _scared_," Sam continued after kicking the plant twice more. "Especially after Mirrin... after she said that there might be a chance that we couldn't get them back."

"She said that?" Alex asked. That hadn't been in the report the two had given upon returning to the plane. 

"Ah flipped when she told me," Sam admitted with a frown. "But she told me why and Ah understand it, sorta. But we did get them back and now Ah can't stop being scared. Ah _know_ Ah'm probably gonna outlive Cable and Domino. Even if Ah wasn't an External, if indeed that's what it is. But Ah don't want to lose them so fast. And Cable's always makin' it like it's _my_ fault that Ah worry that them being reckless is gonna make that day come sooner rather than later. Instead of it being him flyin' off on suicide missions..."

"It _is_ your fault," Alex replied. "But you're right, it's a shared responsibility. Nathan owes it to you - and Jean and Scott and Domino and whoever else is in the unfortunate predicament of caring deeply about his well-being - to remember that it's foolish to wish that you didn't care and to act accordingly." 

Sam could tell by the tone of Alex's voice that Alex considered himself one of the unfortunates. Which only made sense, Sam reasoned. Alex may not have much of a relationship with Cable, but he was still his uncle and was still close with Scott and Jean. 

"Domino's always handled that sort of stuff better," Sam said after a long pause. "Which is funny in a way 'cause Ah'm not sure how many people she's ever really let close enough to care about her. But... she's more human than Cable is at times."

"She'd let you hug her," Alex offered.

"She'd put up a stink, but yeah," Sam agreed, smilingly crookedly at the mental image of trying to hug Domino. "She'd be real uncomfortable and would tease you something fierce, but she wouldn't be all cold like Cable was..."

"If it makes you feel better, I think Mirrin got angry at Nathan for being so casual about it all," Alex said after a pause. 

Sam was about to kick the plant again but stopped in mid-kick. "It does in the abstract sense - Ah know Cable's a lot more scared of her than he is of me - but... It's like watchin' someone else beat up the bad guys. It's not satisfying in the same way 'cause you don't know if your gripes are gettin' avenged."

"Mirrin does seem to have raised being oblique to an art form," Alex agreed. "And now we know it isn't a language thing."

"Ah think Ah'm startin' to understand her a little, actually," Sam said, turning to face Alex. Sam could almost see the wistfulness in Alex's expression and chose his next words carefully. "But Ah'm also starting to suspect that she's just a gentler version of Cable. Duty first, no matter how much it hurts." And now, more than ever, Sam understood just how much duty hurt for both of them.

"Isn't that what we're all supposed to think in this business?"

"If we don't like what we're doin', we can quit," Sam explained. "If duty starts to hurt too much."

"Like I did?" Alex asked rhetorically. Leave it to Sam to completely unintentionally strip away all honor from his decision to become a civilian. Which is probably how Nathan - and especially Mirrin - saw it, but still...

"Yes and no," Sam said, conscious of how his words might be taken by Alex. "It's not like you never answered the call in the first place. Ah mean, you sacrificed yourself in Dallas, right? And you're here now. But... we can take vacations from the hero business. Or we can at least try. Even Cyclops and Phoenix went off to Alaska... Ah don't think Cable or Mirrin think they can take a time-out."

"From what little I know of the thirty-eighth century... I'm not sure that they _can_ take a time-out," Alex said, thinking back to a dozen such conversations with Mirrin. He sighed then, clapping his hands on his knees. "And I'm not sure the thirty-eighth century is taking a time-out from us. Are you ready to head back now?"

Sam exhaled heavily and nodded. "Ah guess Ah better go and apologize for storming off like a fool."

"To Cable?" Alex asked, surprised.

"There's no sayin' sorry to an Askani," Sam replied ruefully as he stood up. "Ah was thinkin' Ah should apologize to Cyclops."

"Oh, come on, you're hardly the first person to walk away from Scott in a huff," Alex said cheerfully. 

"Ah disrespected his command by walkin' off without asking," Sam explained. 

"Cable had X-Force that well trained?" Alex asked in frank disbelief. "You're not even the first person to disrespect Cyke's command in the last half-hour. He's not offended."

Alex stood up and the two began their trek back to camp. About halfway back, they stumbled across Domino, who nearly took Alex's head off with her drawn plasma rifle. 

"I'd say that I'm lucky that you decided to ask questions first and shoot second," Alex said after he recovered from his surprise. "But that would probably be your line."

Domino gave him a flat stare. "Don't try to make a funny at me. I was there the last time a Summers cracked a successful joke. Your family isn't due for another three years at least," she warned as they began to walk. She had initially planned a much harsher retort, but changed her mind upon seeing Sam's expression. Whatever Alex had done had apparently worked, as Sam no longer looked either irate or distraught. 

Sam coughed to cover up his chortle. 

"I'm disappointed to know that Nathan was the lucky Summers," Alex sighed dramatically.

"Who said it was Nate?" Domino asked. "Your grandmother called X-Force headquarters on his birthday a few years ago."

"My _grandmother_?" Alex repeated as he narrowly avoided tripping on a root. "Not that my grandmother isn't cool and all, but... But she's also related by marriage, not blood. She's immune the same way Jean is. That means there's still an opening. I'd better go come up with material before Scott or Nathan accidentally make someone laugh with them instead of at them." With that, he sped ahead. 

Domino and Sam continued at their own pace. 

"He gets credit for trying, but he loses points for no subtlety and little smoothness," Domino mused aloud after a pause. "But considering whose uncle he is, those deductions can probably be written off."

They walked on.

"Ah'm sorry, Domino," Sam said quietly. 

"What the hell do you have to be sorry for, Sam?" Domino bit back, a little sharper than she intended. "Or are you just saying it because I won't tell you 'sorry has no meaning'?"

"For sayin' what Ah said back by the boat..." he trailed off. 

"You told the truth, Sam. It was an ugly truth, but it was the truth," Domino replied, stopping and waiting for Sam to turn to face her. "Nate and I didn't drill you in the importance of teamwork so that you'd think that the rules didn't apply to us."

Sam nodded. "So why'd y'all go off in the first place?" Not demanding, not doubtful, just curious.

"We thought we'd be able to get in and out," Domino answered with a shrug. "We've done it before. And besides, I think Nate knew all along that Mirrin would be the back-up plan..."

"Probably," Sam agreed, swallowing the rest of what he was going to say. He didn't think Domino understood what sort of back-up plan Mirrin really was.

By mutual agreement, they continued walking. 

"Ah saw your... Ah saw you and Cable...," Sam tried to begin and failed. 

"I'm sorry that you did," Domino said quietly as she slowed her steps. "And more than just the kind of sorry that goes along with it being my carcass... I kinda always hoped that I'd go out on a high note - have everyone think I'm sunning in Maui or something. Not with everyone pissed off. Except my bookie. Him, he should be pissed off."

"There's a gambling operation in the world that still lets you get in on the action?" Sam asked incredulously. Domino had taken him to a casino in Monaco once. They had lasted a whole hour before kindly being asked to leave... with enough francs to rent a villa for the team for a week. 

"That's why I need a bookie," Domino said. "There are fools born every minute. Some of them go to the circus. Some set up shop running bets."

Sam could see the campfire in the distance, through some trees. 

Domino paused with her foot on a tree stump. "I know why he's acting the way he is. He has to. He's got ghosts of his past and glimpses at people's futures and he's stuck here in the present where he can only take it one day at a time. And it's killing him that he's confronted with his own mistakes and all of the mistakes that aren't his but he's decided should be... and he's got all this power and he still can't do anything to make it all better. 

"And that doesn't make it right," Domino said, waving off Sam's attempt at protest, "But that's why he does it. I hate to tell you, Sam, but I've got a few more decades' worth of reasons to be pissed off at him than you do... Sometimes you can forgive him and sometimes you have to tell him to go flonq himself because even if he's convinced himself that he's happy doing all this, it doesn't justify the shitty way he can treat everybody else." 

Domino sighed heavily. 

"I can't say _I'm_ taking this whole 'now you're dead, now you're not' thing all that well," she said softly. "I mean I've been nearly dead more times than I can count. The world has nearly ended enough times... but the operative word is 'nearly'. Knowing how it all panned out... knowing that my luck finally ran out at the wrong time..."

Without thinking long enough to wonder if it was the right idea, Sam put his arms around Domino and squeezed. Domino stiffened in his embrace for a split-second and then relaxed and, checking as far as she could without moving her head to see that there were no witnesses, she returned the hug. 

"Ah'm glad you're here, Dom," Sam said quietly, leaning his head down a little so that he could whisper in her ear. 

"I am too, Sam," she agreed, trying to hold back whatever emotions were welling up inside. "I don't want to be the reason you stop blowing sunshine out your ass."

Sam tried to stifle his laugh - laughing and hugging were not mutually compatible exercises - and failed. "Love you, too, ma'am."

"Well," Domino said after another moment, patting Sam on the back and pulling out of the embrace. "Now that we've cleared that up, let's go gang up on General Custer... or rescue him from Mirrin."

They came through the last of the trees a few minutes later. 

***

http://www.geocities.com/nikimarzione/ 


	23. FP 23: Better Not to Know

Future Pluperfect: Chapter 23 

* * *

Textual Poaching Alert: Marvel owns everyone but Mirrin, although Social Services would have stripped custody long ago...

* * *

"You rooted through the files on my computer," Cable said almost casually, the way one would talk about weather. He fiddled with the pack he was using as a pillow so that his flashlight wasn't poking into the back of his skull. "You deleted some of them."

By the time Domino and Sam had returned to the camp, tempers had cooled and a strategy session could begin in earnest. It was agreed that waiting until dawn was the least bad idea - the downside of heading towards the Kurioon nest without the cover of darkness was minimized by the fact that they needed to wait until the current state of heightened alert had passed. 

As such, the group had finished preparations on a small camp to wait out the storm. Iceman was taking his turn on ground patrol and Cannonball, the only real flyer on the team, was taking the air.

"I did," Mirrin agreed in the same conversational tone. 

A few feet away in different directions, both Domino and Jean watched the pair with concern. A lot had gone on in the last few days and there had been little chance to absorb it all. With Bobby gone, the group had fallen into an introspective silence and their conversation was all the more noticeable for its lack of competition. 

"Was it out of actual necessity or the usual Askani paranoia that I'd see something that would take me away from my mission?" Nathan asked, trying to keep the sarcasm from sounding too heavy. He hoped he'd made it sound like he wasn't terribly concerned and was just curious. Instead of being taken completely by surprise and extraordinarily pissed off, which was what he was. Nathan was generally not a man for surprises. Telepaths rarely were. 

The question earned him a flat stare from his clanmate, the kind that reminded Nathan that the only thing harder than trying to fool a telepath was trying to get one over on a telepath who knew your every mood intimately. Mirrin knew he was pissed off and didn't care. 

"Have you ever known me to be paranoid?" She asked with an irritated frown. "Of course it was necessary." 

"I'd read everything already. You didn't delete anything I hadn't already seen," he pointed out (admittedly churlishly) as he stretched his legs. Nathan idly noticed that Scott was fiddling with one of the modified plasma rifles the X-Men had been carrying since Lebanon. While he didn't think Scott would accidentally discharge the weapon, he was curious as to what Scott was attempting to do. His father was not an innovator, but he was good at re-working existing technology into something new and useful. A recycler. Nathan wondered if he had been like that before a dozen years of foraging in the thirty-eighth century.

"That's to be expected," Mirrin replied, waiting for Nathan's attention to return to her. "Besides, I sincerely doubt that Blaquesmith would have let you store any data that would be... problematic to the Askani cause. They're paranoid like that." Only her eyes gave away that she was mocking him. 

"This wasn't Mirrin-the-Askani doing the deleting, then?" Nathan raised his eyebrows meaningfully. That was as much of an admission as he was likely to get from her. If Mirrin hadn't been acting for the Sisterhood, then what was her motivation? It would be completely against all of the Clan Chosen's ethics to tamper with - and destroy - another clanmate's possessions. Especially without explanation.

"I am always Askani, Nat'an."

"Don't get cute," he retorted, watching Alex unsuccessfully stoke the campfire with a stick before resorting to a tiny plasma blast. "You know what I meant."

"I think I should get credit for working on this," Alex announced to the general population, which when reduced to those actually paying attention was only Jean. "Warming all of you up with no personal benefit to myself."

"It's called being selfless, Alex," Jean replied, looking up from the fruit she was peeling. She could have done it telekinetically, but really just wanted to keep her hands busy. "And you wonder why you live alone."

"I don't wonder," Alex retorted as he walked back to his pack that was resting alongside Mirrin. "I live alone by choice."

"Keep convincing yourself of that, brother mine," Scott said without looking up from the dissected guts of the rifle. 

"I know which files you deleted," Nathan continued after the others had fallen silent again. "They had to do with Sam." 

They had been, to be precise, the files he had used to make his determination to come to this time in the first place. The files contained evidence that an External born in this time would live into at least the twenty-fourth century. One External named Samuel Guthrie. 

Nathan had meant to show them to Domino the morning before they had left for Vanuatu, a move partly inspired to ease her mind concerning Sam and partly to show Domino that he did indeed trust her as he trusted Mirrin. Not that Domino had said anything about the latter, but he could feel it. 

But the very trusted Mirrin had at some point hacked into the system and deleted the files. And this was the first time he was getting a chance to find out why. 

"Domino, would you like half of this?" Jean asked, holding out the papaya. "It's too big for me to finish and Summers men don't eat squishy food."

The other woman smirked knowingly at Nathan, then shrugged and nodded and was about to get up when Jean waved her back down. A large leaf floated down from a nearby tree and wrapped half of the papaya and the entire ensemble was levitated towards Domino.

"Thanks," Domino said upon receipt. 

There was another long silence mostly spent watching Alex set up his sleeping bag. For reasons Nathan couldn't figure out, Mirrin seemed to have taken a shine to his uncle. Not that Alex wasn't a person worthy of such attention (anyone who shunned the X-Men on a routine basis couldn't be all bad) but Nathan would have suspected that Mirrin (a woman who lived her life bound by a duty that even Nathan wasn't sure he understood) would have found Alex's general unwillingness to make superheroing his life's work distasteful. Hindsight had, however, told him that Nathan had never really understood much about Mirrin's thoughts about relationships. Her... tasks... for both the Askani as well as Clan Chosen had almost precluded any sort of long-term commitment to anyone. Other than himself, Nathan added ruefully. 

"I had to delete the files," she explained after Alex had put on a (intentionally) melodramatic show of being wounded from the earlier slights and settled down with his eyes closed. 

"Why?" Curiosity bordering on irritation melted into that about-to-be-pissed-off state of preparation that Nathan felt he had spent most of his life in, at least after Redd and Slym Dayspring had vanished. Mirrin had been doing what she thought was best for him, he concluded. 

"The why of any situation," Mirrin trailed off as Nathan mentally snarled. She knew she was baiting him. She had to know. And he knew he was responding to it anyway.

Across the campfire, a suddenly dangerously glowing eye did draw the attention of three people who had learned years ago which color glow was the happy one and which one meant ducking and running. This wasn't the happy glow and Domino, Jean and Scott shared a rare moment of communal concern. Alex, parked on the other side of Mirrin from Nathan with his eyes closed, missed the exchange. 

"Why, Mirrin?" Quiet, almost menacing. Not curious anymore, just demanding and impossible to mistake for anything but what it was no matter whether or not you understood Askani. 

Alex opened his eyes. 

The young woman leaned back from a sitting position to rest her weight on her elbows. In any other situation, it would be an unconsciously seductive pose. Closing her eyes, she sighed. "Because I owe him a debt," she answered quietly in English. 

The alarm flashing along the telepathic bond between Scott and Jean would have been impossible for either of the other telepaths to miss had they been paying attention. As it was, Nathan and Mirrin didn't even notice the matching sets of raised eyebrows as Alex and Domino exchanged glances. 

It would not have surprised anyone to know that in Askani, there was no word for 'debt' as an abstract concept. There were words for specific types of obligation - owed wealth, a favor done with repayment expected, etc. - but no general word for the blanket condition of owing somebody something. As such, there was no way to discuss a debt in Askani without revealing exactly what sort it was. 

Nathan Dayspring knew this, just as he knew that there was no word to use to apologize for a wrong committed. Rachel had put a lot of thought into such matters.

"Why, Mirrin," he repeated, the unspoken demand to answer in Askani remained unspoken, but was understood. 

"A life-debt. I owe him a life-debt," she answered in a whisper, sitting up a little so that she could touch her forehead and then raise her fingers to the sky in a quick gesture. She leaned back again, taking a quick look around the campsite to see if Cannonball had returned from his scouting trip with Iceman. 

Knowing that she was founding a war clan and knowing that such a distinction would need to be made, the Mother Askani and her disciples had come up with two words for the concept of a life-debt. The first was used when someone wanted to describe the situation where someone else had saved his or her life, either literally or metaphorically. It was used colloquially and without much consideration for any deeper meaning. The second was used when the salvation had come at the expense of the rescuer's own life, when it was a sacrifice. It was not a term used lightly and among the more spiritual of the Askani it was usually accompanied by a gesture to the heavens as a means of acknowledging the debt. 

"That's not in the files," Nathan finally said, his voice cold. 

"It would have been too dangerous for you to know," she explained.

"It isn't now?" Anger spiked up, but it was anger aimed at the Askani as a whole, not its representative at the moment and his voice stayed frigid.

"You won't use it now," Mirrin answered softly. 

"How do you know?" Not a challenge, not curiosity, but someplace in between that made it clear to Mirrin that there were moments when she and Nathan really didn't know each other very well at all. 

"Because I'll tell you that he lived past his four hundredth birthday and had pretty much seen and done all he wanted to see and do. He died in the arms of someone he trusted - even if I didn't know why yet - and for a cause he believed in. I know that you love that boy too much to deny him that comfort."

Nathan was silent for a long moment, long enough to stare menacingly at his parents, who continued to look concerned in spite of his snarl. "What cause?"

"You already know."

Nathan did. And it nauseated him. Sam had died saving Mirrin in the future so that Mirrin could save Nathan in the present. Sam had died so that they could be here, now. So that Nathan could be alive to face Apocalypse and fulfill his own mission. Without meaning to, he flashed back to that dreadful afternoon as Aliya, his precious Aliya, lay dying in his arms. But as he relived that moment, he saw it change, saw Aliya turn into Sam, saw himself turn into Mirrin...

"Don't. Don't you dare start to wallow, Dayspring." Mirrin's voice cut sharply into his thoughts. "You have this amazing ability to forget that we're all mortal. We all die, even High Lords. You can't keep everyone you hold dear alive for as long as you want them around. It's not a matter of if, but when. So stop feeling all miserable that the inevitable happened and wondering what you could have done to change it. I won't let you change it. Not for Sam."

A searching look into Mirrin's face. "Did you love him?"

"What? No! We weren't... I wasn't there-and-then long enough to start much of any sort of relationship," Mirrin said bitterly as she shook her head in a mixture of disbelief and remembrance. "Just enough to get into trouble. Not enough to even get a decent explanation out of Sam as to why he knew me."

Nathan nodded. 

As if on cue, Cannonball dropped suddenly from the dark sky to land gracefully right on top of his unrolled sleeping bag. 

"He doesn't know," Nathan said, not really making it a question. He couldn't help but remember how awkward Sam's early flights had been. Turns had been nearly impossible and stopping even worse. Sam had resorted to crashing into walls, trees, Nathan, or anything or anyone else who was strong enough to impede his forward progress. It was a crushing blow to Sam's self-confidence, especially as Xavier had expected him to be the junior version of the leader Scott had always been.

"That's hardly something to lay at the feet of another," Mirrin said by way of agreement as she watched Sam quietly nod to them both then walk over to Scott to make his report, stopping by Domino for a long moment. 

"You did it with me," Nathan returned, not sounding nearly as bitter as the words would make it sound. What is, is. Askani training was peculiar that way - it became an automatic response even when you were consumed with anger at the institution itself. Rachel had been thorough.

On the other side of the campfire, Scott finished re-assembling his rifle and looked around for a place to put the parts he had removed. The island was too nice to litter. 

"You're not a boy," Mirrin replied.

"He isn't, either," Nathan corrected as Sam lay down on his sleeping bag and curled up onto his side. 

"You're right," Mirrin allowed. "But he is granted certain protections that you as clan leader are not."

It wasn't in Nathan's nature to seek the positive in anything, so instead of comfort he found relief in Mirrin's casual use of clan terminology instead of her having made reference to Askani dogma. It probably prevented another energy-draining fight. And the part of Nathan that was the warrior (contrary to popular belief, it was not the whole of him) knew that he really didn't have that much energy to spare even as the human part wanted to rail and cry out at the knowledge that his mission - the one that to wage had cost him almost all that he cared about and the one for which success would mean the ripping away of all that he had ever been - had just racked up another casualty. Sam. Sam, the boy he had come back in time specifically to find. 

The conversation was effectively ended by the return of Iceman.

"I am proud to announce," Bobby called out in a loud whisper from the edge of their camp, "that six years of boy scouts provided me with absolutely no preparation for walking around in the dark in a tropical jungle. I'm calling the Better Business Bureau once we get back home."

"And they'll tell you first that the warranty has expired," Alex replied, sitting up, "And then that the Boy Scouts are a social organization and not a religious one and thus can't be expected to perform miracles like teaching you to survive on your own."

"Are you calling me uneducatable?" Bobby asked mock-menacingly as he walked over to where his pack was sitting between Alex and Jean. "Rock-lover."

"Bean counter," Alex shot back and leaned back and rolled over to put his back to Bobby. Now facing Mirrin, he winked at her even as she gave him a skeptical look. Or maybe it was a confused one. 

"Don't turn your back to me," Bobby groused as he sat down. "I'm not finished insulting you."

"Go pick on someone else," Alex replied, still not turning back.

"I'm scared of everyone else here," Bobby explained.

"I'm going on next guard shift," Nathan announced, not flinching as everyone else broke into chuckles. 

"It's my turn," Scott replied, standing up. "You've been up for a few days and need to rest. They'll bore each other silent in a few minutes."

"Hey!" both Alex and Bobby grumbled indignantly.

***

Banality and the X-Men. Two things that often seemed to go together, Remy mused. Which seemed kind of odd considering that this was supposed to be a superhero outfit.

The plane ride to Scotland had been a study in boredom, he decided as he looked over the sand dune, and the trip from Scotland to the Sudan only slightly less so if only for the added tension that Colossus and Shadowcat added to the already existing stress between himself and Rogue. 

That, and the fact that with ten people (two of whom answered to the size-indicative codenames of 'Beast' and 'Colossus') the mini-jet had been damn cramped. 

"Can you see if any of them looks to be a command post?" Archangel, lying on his stomach next to him, asked. Remy had binoculars, but Archangel didn't need them as the pair looked across the horizon at the Kurioon settlement. It was a small open circle of structures, low-lying and obviously built for long-term outdoor use. Each sand-colored building was almost perfectly smooth in its exterior with no visible moving parts to be gummed up with sand as well as seamless, sloped roofs to keep anything from collecting.

"Look identical," Remy replied. His own vision made the night-vision option of the binoculars unnecessary to see what was lurking in the growing shadows. Dusk was approaching, but slowly. Until then, they had nothing to do but wait and pick on each other. Which would be just like what they did at home, except with less sand. "Smart money says it ain't one of the ones on the end and it's not gonna be the middle one."

The plan, such as it was, was simple reconnaissance. Get in, look around, and get out. Blow up what they could, take good notes on what they couldn't, and leave with the same number of people as they had arrived with. Like many of the plans devised by the X-Men, it was elegant in its simplicity and because of that it would be utterly ignored once the action got underway.

"It looks like a trailer park, the kind with a satellite dish and a playground and all the other sorts of amenities that make you wonder why they didn't rent a house in the first place," Archangel said after a long pause. 

"Don't think we're gon' be lucky enough to watch them get hit by a tornado," Remy answered ruefully, idly remembering a bit of a George Carlin routine. "Although we could check with Stormy..."

"The thought has indeed crossed my mind," Storm answered through the wireless communicators they all wore in their ears. "But while burying the entire installment under sand would be the simple solution, if the inelegant one, it would do nothing to fill in our admittedly large intelligence gaps."

Gambit had suggested - and Storm had been intrigued by the idea - that with three experienced thieves present (Shadowcat hadn't even looked mildly embarrassed at her inclusion), a bit of skulking around was not only possible but also possibly successful. There were a few issues, however, that had to be worked out before night fell and the team could emerge from its not-very-hidden hiding spots. 

"Anyone come up wit' an idea on how to make Colossus inconspicuous?" he asked. 

Rogue and Archangel were to fly surveillance and were thus not subject to such scrutiny. Apart from the three thieves, Nightcrawler and Beast had acrobatic training and Psylocke and Wolverine could walk over eggshells. Colossus, even if he wasn't in the organic steel form that would gleam in the moonlight, was very hard to hide.

"I suppose leaving him on the plane isn't an option," Psylocke chirped into her communicator from her position somewhere else in the ever-present sand. 

The team had split up into five pairs and scattered themselves in a large circle around the Kurioon camp. The installment itself wasn't very large and the equipment the team had brought with them had been sufficient to detect and avoid the perimeter alarms that had been set up. Gambit was not alone in his apprehension at the relative ease with which they had set up their surveillance in broad daylight. 

"I'm not carry-on luggage," Colossus grumbled from his position on the opposite side of the camp (where Nightcrawler had teleported them).

"Nope, just excess baggage," Psylocke replied back with a chuckle. "But we do love you anyway."

"So you say," Colossus returned, sounding wounded although Gambit suspected that the big Russian was just playing. Even with his binoculars he couldn't see any of the other pairs, but one did not become a Guild thief without having mastered the inflections and intonations of unseen voices. 

"Mind puttin' your energy towards watching our friends instead of workin' your gums?" Wolverine groused. 

"Oh, come on, Wolverine," Rogue chuckled, her clear alto voice making the receiver in Gambit's ear vibrate a little as she laughed. "There ain't nothin' to watch 'xcept sand. It's still hot enough to melt those metal men and they ain't goin' anywhere. 'Sides, you know we work best when we're pickin' on each other."

"It's better to pick on your friends than pick your nose," Shadowcat blurted cheerfully and from his own position Remy stifled a laugh at Storm's non-verbal noise of disgust. "Oh. Was that out loud?"

There was a mumble and then a bark of laughter that Gambit knew belonged to Wolverine. "She didn't get that from_ me_!" 

"Nice to know that given the chance the two of you will still act like my parents and blame each other for my bad habits," Shadowcat said, sounding bemused. "Which one of you wants to take credit for my inability to make my bed on a regular basis?"

"That's Cyclops," both Storm and Wolverine replied almost in sync. 

General laughter ensued. Fearless Leader or not, inappropriate topic of discussion on a stakeout or not, Scott Summers was well known for being a member of the 'there's no point in making a bed if you're just going to get back into it' school of thought. Jean had long given up on trying to break him of the habit, had even gone past just making her side of the bed. 

But thinking of their erstwhile leader's peccadilloes, amusing as they were, cast a somber pall over the group. Cyclops - and Phoenix and Cable and the others - were missing right now and nobody wanted to consider the danger they might be in. 

The portable Cerebro unit that was automatically keyed into all of the X-Men's psi signatures registered none of Cyclops's group; they had all disappeared late the previous morning. Psylocke had been at the monitor when the alarm had sounded and had felt the dim background connections in her mind wink out even as the alarm pealed. The X-Men - and their friends - had been slightly edgy since then.

"I could use a Creamsicle jus' bout now," Gambit said, trying to dull that edge. Either Cyclops and his team were coming back (with or without Cable and Domino) or they weren't. Either way, Storm's group, be they sole survivors or second wave, had to keep on top of things and the line between being on guard and being in need of one was neither very fine nor very hard to trip over. Humor - even the lame, recycled humor that the X-Men tended to favor, had its uses. 

"Ah thought you disliked everything Iceman brings into the kitchen on principle," Rogue retorted, her voice sounding forced like she was shifting positions in the sand. "His cuisine ain't chi-chi enough for ya."

"We're how close to meltin' into a puddle of mutant goo in the sand?" Gambit asked in reply, secretly pleased to hear the lack of venom in Rogue's voice. "No point in bein' picky right now. Lyin' right next to a guy with a natural sun shade and I'm ready to be dropped in a po'boy."

Next to him, Archangel snorted a laugh and angled one of his wings - the one he was using to shade himself - so that Gambit was a little more covered. A long talk with Scott after the Ukraine on not letting personal animosities get in the way of missions had him in a relatively amenable mood. "You just had to ask, although I'd appreciate no more food talk. I may resemble a bird, but I don't eat like one. That sandwich was hours ago."

Groans and grunts of agreement filled Remy's ears. They had left Muir Island ten hours ago and had not packed much in the way of food - water was the priority, plus there was the aforementioned space problem.

"Is this where all envision each other like roast chickens, like they do in the cartoons?" Shadowcat asked. 

"There might be some advantage to a restricted diet here," Beast mused aloud, probably grateful for any change of topic that kept him from focusing on the amount of sand in his fur. "The more weight we lose, the less cramped the return trip will be."

"You starve yourself," Wolverine retorted. "I'm eatin' the first thing that runs in front of me - and that includes any of you if we have to wait much longer - and then makin' Rogue and Archangel fly themselves home."

"Why do I sense a staging of the first ever mutant-only production of 'Lord of the Flies'?" Psylocke asked nobody in particular. "Second ever, come to think of it. Australia should count for something."

"Where's Havok when you need him?" Colossus wondered aloud. Gambit noticed that the big Russian got more talkative the longer they were away from Scotland. "He could always find food in seemingly desolate locations."

"I have not yet gotten hungry enough that I miss the spit-roasted rodents," Storm replied, sounding elegant in her disgust. "'Chicken of the Outback' indeed."

"Is that what that was?" Colossus asked, sounding horrified. "He never said, just presented everyone with the cooked meat."

"It tasted like chicken," Rogue pointed out with a verbal shrug. "Wasn't so bad."

"As I recall, you were the one who used to do head counts after being served mystery meat," Psylocke pointed out. "Even after Wolverine told you we taste like pork."

"Coulda been Longshot," Rogue replied a little defensively. "He wasn't from 'round here. He coulda tasted like chicken..."

"Make a note to ask Al... Ow, no hittin', Storm," Wolverine coughed out between bouts of laughter.

"How long you reckon we gotta wait?" Rogue asked after the group had finally stopped laughing. "While this is fun and all, Ah'm gettin' stiff just lying here, 'specially since Ah don't tan. And there hasn't been any action in hours."

"Another half-hour should put the sun almost below the horizon," Beast replied. "But we still have not definitively answered whether or not there will be patrols later on. After nightfall, there is always more traffic in the desert."

"I think Wolverine had the right of it," Storm said. "The camp is just that - a camp. Perhaps it has not yet reached the point where heavy security is warranted."

"Didn't Mirrin say that the nest was booby-trapped so that it was supremely dangerous from early on?" Archangel asked. "Thermonuclear weapons is what she said, right? Even considering the Kurioon's shocking lack of concern about friendly fire, it would make sense for them not to waste resources guarding a site that could amply protect itself."

"Ja, but also remember that the Kurioon isn't expecting anyone," Nightcrawler pointed out. "We are hundreds of kilometers from civilization. And as far as they are concerned, Cable is dead and Apocalypse can accede to his thrown uncontested. The Kurioon has never shown any inclination to treat us as an adversary to be concerned about, nor, arguably have we done much to change their minds. Even before they disappeared from the radar, this looked like a low-level project. They could be taking their time."

"We've been watching the installation for hours," Storm said. "We have not seen any patrols and I would venture that were the Kurioon to use them, they would have been out day and night."

"Which puts us back to wonderin' where the video surveillance is," Gambit said by way of agreement. "Low-level facility or not, they're too sharp to be relying solely on a bunch of motion sensors half-buried in the sand."

"In their own time, in the future, there is a lot of desert," Colossus began slowly. "That is what I have gleaned, at least from the reports Cable and Mirrin sent to us. Video equipment is easy for us to fool; it must be even easier two thousand years from now."

"Heat sensors," Shadowcat finished. "Everybody leaks heat, no matter how well-armored they are. And in the coolness of a desert night..."

"And with all of the mutants on Apocalypse's side of the gameboard, there would be little reason for them to anticipate anything like Storm's ability to keep us cool," Beast agreed. "If our estimable field leader can manipulate the meteorology so that we might pass undetected through this sweet night without destroying any equipment, our odds do improve quite a bit."

An hour later and under a heavy fog unheard of in a desert, satisfied that no patrols were indeed forthcoming, the group reconvened and split into three groups. Rogue and a heavily armed Archangel took to the sky while on the ground Gambit, Psylocke, Wolverine, and Beast headed one way and Storm, Shadowcat, Nightcrawler, and Colossus the other. 

"Hey, Monsieur le bête," Gambit whispered behind him, "You got that videocamera rolling?"

"Just call me Coppola," Beast replied as he adjusted the attachment to his goggles. He was privately quite proud of the almost weightless tiny camera he had developed so that he could better share Legacy virus data with Moira McTaggart, mostly because it had been his design (not Forge's) and he had received envious murmurings from Reed Richards upon its inspection. "The night vision color correction is looking spectacular, if I don't say so myself."

"I'll wait for the director's cut," Psylocke said into her communicator from her position as point. "It's clear around the corner."

The quartet skirted around one of the trailer-like buildings and on to the next. The first phase was investigation, so they were just looking around for the moment. 

"Don't like this at all," Gambit muttered, running his expert fingers over the surface of one of the structures and detecting no weak points. "No such thing as an unguarded military installation. No such thing as an unguarded valuable. And somehow I don't think we're walkin' round in the Kurioon's garbage dump."

"A trap, more likely," Psylocke said by way of agreement. "A very elaborate one."

"Storage," Wolverine grunted out as he joined the trio from where he had been guarding the rear. "Non-essential materials storage. It's probably got some automated defense so if it's breached it'll blow and they won't miss it too badly."

"Comforting thought, that," Psylocke replied dourly. "But we go on, I gather, because non-essential to them doesn't mean non-essential to us."

On the other side of the compound, Storm and the three erstwhile members of Excalibur had reached a similar conclusion.

"If this were Arcade, I'd say it was a trap," Nightcrawler mused aloud as he watched Shadowcat run a portable x-ray scan over a large, smooth box lying next to one of the buildings. It was quite firmly entrenched in the ground, but whether it was attached to anything couldn't be determined. "But this is too elaborate for anyone who doesn't take joy from the thrill of the chase."

"We have been ignoring the option that this has nothing to do with the Kurioon," Colossus pointed out from where he stood leaning against a wall. "Advanced technology aside, perhaps we should not continue to do so. The Kurioon are not the only ones capable of such..." he waved his hand expansively. 

"None of our other... more traditional... opponents have such abundant self-confidence that they would leave something unattended," Storm replied as she ran her hand over the surface of the box Shadowcat was scanning. No seams to get her lock picks into. 

"And that means that it's either not unoccupied and it's a trap," Shadowcat said as she looked up and turned off the scanner that wasn't reading anything. "Or it's the Kurioon. Although to be perfectly honest, I'd much prefer to see Arcade at this stage of the game. Even the Technet..."

"We're 'bout done here," Gambit's voice came over the communicator. "You ready to give 'em the official X-Men grand entrance?"

"All right," Storm agreed, swallowing a sardonic laugh. "Archangel, Rogue, we shall need you two to keep your eyes open for anything coming to greet us."

"Will do," Archangel replied.

"Shadowcat?" Storm asked, gesturing towards the building Colossus was leaning against. "Gambit and Wolverine, wait for our signal," she said into her communicator.

Standing up, Shadowcat walked over to the wall and reached out, phasing her hand through the seamless surface and pulling it back out. There were no alarms, instead only a faint click and then a hum. 

"Real good power back-up," Shadowcat mused aloud. "Too bad it doesn't matter." She stuck her head in this time, again to the sound of a click as her own mutant power disrupted the machinery. She passed the rest of her body through the wall moments later, leaving Storm, Colossus, and Nightcrawler to wait anxiously for her return. Trusting Shadowcat's abilities aside, there was seemingly no way for them to follow her in case of a rescue being required. 

There was radio silence for five minutes, long enough for anxiety to melt into deep concern, until Shadowcat's voice came through on the communicator. "Gambit, you can probably short out the power supply long enough for Wolverine to cut through without shocking himself stupid," she said, her voice sounding brittle even through the communicator. "The circuitry is the same as the Danger Room, so use what you'd use to break into the Control Room."

"What?!?!" Came the collective response. 

"Are you sure about that?" Nightcrawler asked. 

"How many times have I been sitting in the guts of the console?" Shadowcat asked in reply. "You know I've had my suspicions all along, but this confirms it. But that's really not what's important here."

"What is inside, Shadowcat?" Storm asked concernedly, leaning her head against the smooth wall as if it would either bring her closer or give her insight.

"Cyborg parts," was the reply. "Metal skeletons in tubes with flesh growing on them."

"We're on our way in," Psylocke announced over the communicator. "Wolverine's almost done with the door."

"Shadowcat, come and fetch us so we can see," Nightcrawler requested, putting his hand against the wall. "You shouldn't be in there alone."

"I'm working my way back," Shadowcat said, then yelped a curse. 

"Katya?!?" Colossus banged futilely against the wall. 

"I'm all right, I'm all right, I just tripped," she replied after a long moment. "I made myself solid so that I didn't phase through anything and trip an alarm by accident."

"Oh my stars and garters," Beast's voice came over the radios. "It's a veritable factory in here. We could inflict quite a bit of population control..."

A minute later, Shadowcat emerged several yards away from the trio and shook her head sadly as she joined her teammates. "This has to be where they've been growing them."

"How can that be?" Storm asked as she linked hands with Shadowcat and the other two so that they could phase through the wall. "If the nest is in Vanuatu..."

"There are empty cases," Psylocke replied over the communicator. "And there's nobody home otherwise."

Storm had no choice but to agree with the assessment once she was inside. The single room looked... lived in, for lack of a better phrase. Well used.

"Anybody wanna tell us what's going on?" Rogue's voice came through the radios. 

"Archangel, remember Larry Trask's mutant storage tubes?" Beast asked as he walked slowly around, making sure he caught every detail on video. "Imagine that on a grand scale."

"Here," Psylocke said. "I'll telepathically send you two what I see."

"Oh my," was all Rogue could say as Psylocke's mental images started coming through. 

"We're coming to ground," Archangel announced. "There's nobody coming and there won't be anyone coming."

"Why's that?" Gambit asked as he stared at a metal skeleton sitting in a tube of fluid. There was mesh over the metal, but the flesh that grew on it hadn't really taken yet. 

"Because this has gotta be the nest," Wolverine said as he came up beside him. "Which leaves us with two questions... Where the hell did Cable run off to and how the hell are we getting out of here before the nukes go off?"

***

http://www.geocities.com/nikimarzione/ 


	24. FP 24: Snare

Future Pluperfect: Chapter 24 

* * *

Textual Poaching Alert: Marvel owns everyone but Mirrin, although Social Services would have stripped custody long ago...

* * *

"Still nothing?"

Jean Grey shook her head at her husband. "Still nothing," she confirmed. Turning around, she looked for Cable. "Is this normal?"

They were at the edge of the treeline on their island, looking north to the one occupied by the Kurioon. Since dawn, the three telepaths had been taking turns scanning for life signs, for possible shields, or for anything that could give them any sort of concrete clue about what they were about to face.

"Maybe," Cable finally replied as he stopped fiddling with something Jean couldn't see in one of his utility pouches. "It depends."

She narrowed her eyes at him. "Mind being a little more opaque? I almost got a clue that time."

"If the nest has reached a certain point in its production cycle," Cable expanded, frowning at the sarcasm. Somehow, it sounded less cutting coming from Domino. "It can go for long periods without supervision."

"They'd leave it unprotected?" Iceman asked somewhat incredulously as he leaned forward from where he was crouched. Resting one hand on the ground for balance, he tilted his head to see if he could spot the other quartet stationed further down the edge of the beach.

"It's not unprotected," Cable replied. "As it starts requiring less energy to produce soldiers, it starts turning the extra supply towards defense. It can be almost as dangerous as when it was first planted and it can be monitored remotely. Their energy source is nuclear; it's easy enough to trigger that to self-destruct as a last resort."

"What about prior to that?" Cyclops asked. "They've got to have something short of total destruction for a defense. They're not that inefficient."

"Low-level therms," Cable said with an almost invisible shudder. "Not enough to vaporize, but more than enough to incapacitate."

"So what do we do?" Iceman asked, standing up. He had caught a flash of Havok only with his binoculars and he could have sworn that Alex had flipped him the bird.

"Don't set them off," Cable replied mildly.

"Thank you, Captain Obvious," Iceman retorted with a frown. "Can we handle them?"

"Probably," Cable replied sourly. "They can take out portable energy shields, but weren't meant to be used against telekinetics or anyone else with a natural shield."

"I'm not surprised," Cyclops sighed as he put down the binoculars, remembering life in the thirty-eighth century. "What are the chances that we can take care of this telekinetically?"

"I don't think we have the range," Cable answered. "But two telekinetics plus Cannonball and a teleporter should be enough for everything else."

"Tell the others that they might as well join us," Cyclops told Phoenix as he turned around to face the others. "I don't see any advantage to a two-pronged attack that outdoes having Mirrin teleport us over there."

A few minutes later, the other group appeared.

"We go?" Havok asked without preamble as he stepped over a small plant. Behind him, he could hear Cannonball mutter impolite things about low-growing foliage. Their hiding spot had been in a shady area and Sam had put his hand down on some sort of nettle patch without being able to see it. Domino, right next to him, had missed them all, of course. Mirrin had stood behind the trio, keeping telepathic watch Alex suspected.

"We go," Cyclops confirmed. "We'll stick to what we agreed to once we're over there. Right, Cable?"

Cable gave him a baleful look as a response.

"Right," Cyclops went on breezily. Far be it for him to be intimidated by any of his son's impressive array of dirty looks. "Any last questions?"

A shimmering moment after the question was met with no reply, the group was in the middle of another jungle. Domino watched Cannonball look around.

"This is where we hid from the bird-boy, right?" he asked Mirrin, who nodded. "So we're headed thataway," he said, turning to Domino and Cable and gesturing with his chin.

"It starts getting rocky about a kilometer from here," Mirrin began, pointing in the same direction Cannonball had indicated. "Nothing that we couldn't traverse by foot, although it will slow our progress."

The group began to walk through the trees in close to single file, so it was only a matter of time before Bobby started whistling a familiar tune.

Alex was the first to snort back a chuckle, even though he knew better. But it really was pretty funny. So long as he got to stay out of the discussion of which one of Domino, Jean, or Mirrin got to be Snow White.

Sam coughed quietly to cover up his snickering. But he was okay, really.

Domino arched an eyebrow to frown at Sam, who looked utterly unrepentant much to her dismay. She used to be able to cow him with a glance. Although Drake did seem to know the whole song, so the familiar part that everyone knew wasn't repeating like a demented dirge. Besides, with both Mirrin and Nathan seemingly oblivious to any deeper significance other than the fact that the whistling might be overheard, the accompaniment lent itself to the surreal aura the whole mission had taken on ever since the X-Men had found them on a telekinetically driven rowboat a half-klick off the coast of paradise.

Jean watched Alex and then Bobby and then caught glances with Scott, who simply shook his head and stepped up the pace.

"Telling him to stop will only make him think he's succeeded in driving me crazy," he replied to the unspoken question. "And I won't give him credit for that yet."

"Cable's still got the inside track?" Alex asked.

"Family discount," Cyclops grumbled.

The octet moved on, pausing only when the trees began to thin out.

"The nest is probably on the ridge beyond those trees," Cyclops said as he looked up at the start of the mountain that comprised the north end of the island.

"Make sense," Havok agreed. "It's been an extinct volcano for as long as Vanuatu had been on the atlas. The tree line is intact and the top is sheared in the same direction as the cliff on the north end. If it's plateaued at all on the other side of the face that's closest to us, then they've got a perfect spot."

The trees thinned out in spots but never disappeared completely until they suddenly swelled to become a virtual wall about two-thirds of the way up.

"The geological maps we have say that the north tip is beach leading up to a sheer rock face," Havok continued to the rest of the group. He had spent almost the entire flight -- at least the time not spent bickering with Bobby -- studying the maps. "It's probably impossible to scale without discovery. Our only shot is to get through this maze without getting spotted."

He stepped back to allow the others to take a good look at the scenery.

"How do we like Domino's odds versus Kurioon ingenuity?" Iceman asked thoughtfully.

"I'm not a sure bet," Domino replied with a frown as she moved to the front of the group to get an unobstructed view of the rock formation. "I'm lucky, not blessed."

"Which means our next step is up to you, Cable and Mirrin," Cyclops explained, turning to face the two time travelers. "Everything I have ever learned is telling me to turn back now. We are on our own without support and without even a chance for rescue so long as we are out-of-time and we haven't a clue what we're going to find. More importantly, our mission objective has been fulfilled.

"But I also know that I don't know everything that's going on here," he continued, looking meaningfully at both of them. "Not only what I can't know because I haven't experienced it, but because the two of you keep secrets." He waved off the beginning of a protest from Jean, not surprised that neither Nathan nor Mirrin were offering a denial. "So here's your last chance: tell me something to justify going on or else we're going home. Now."

Sam watched the two telepaths 'talk' it out between them. The only sounds were those of nature and it seemed like everyone was holding their breath waiting for the answer. It wasn't fear -- well, it wasn't all fear. Anticipation. Staving off the rush of adrenaline in case it wasn't needed. And the nagging concern that Mirrin and Cable, now called upon to give full disclosure, would instead give voice to the X-Men's greatest fear -- that there was nothing to be done to stop the Kurioon and the best that could happen was to minimize the damage.

Finally, Mirrin arched her eyebrows at Nathan as if to make sure that they were in agreement and then turned back to the group.

"Time-walking is like crossing a river," she said slowly, carefully, as she wanted to express what was probably inexpressible. "You never step into the same place twice. We are here-and-now, but if we leave we can never be here-and-now again. It will be different in some way, perhaps better for us, perhaps better for the Kurioon."

"And is there a better way to decide that other than a coin flip?" Alex asked as he moved closer to her.

"We've got the equivalent of an X-team here," Cable said finally. "We've had intel reports, we know the terrain, and we do have a clue about what we'll find once we get there. Sometimes you can't sit around and plot it out like a chess game."

"I know that," Cyclops replied a little testily, stepping forward to put his foot on a rock and lean on his leg. "All I'm asking is if we'd be better served going home and coming back with a different group, different weapons, and a more complete understanding of what we're up against. Even if it's to a different here that we return. We came suited for one mission; this is another."

"It's not like we've never gone in unprepared before," Jean pointed out. "And we really have nothing left to lose."

"Just our lives," Bobby suggested, kicking a stone. "That whole 'no rescue' thing."

Domino watched the proceedings with interest. Nathan wasn't trying to bully the others into going on and Mirrin wasn't helping him. Experience had proven to Domino that anything that caused Nate to pause before charging headlong into danger was worth keeping an eye on.

"That won't be a problem," Cable said quietly. "Mirrin can bring people home. We know she'll survive."

An awkward silence fell over the group. Mirrin herself looked less embarrassed than grim.

"Well, that was a conversation killer," Iceman said dryly after the silence dragged. "So since we're going on, is there anything else we need to think about? Like, say, thermonuclear weapons?"

"In theory, the therms can be worked around," Mirrin said thoughtfully, waving away Cable's burgeoning protest. "They're set off by motion detectors and I can teleport us past them. The psi-shielding, if there is any, shouldn't be a problem."

Cyclops watched Cable... who looked as if he had swallowed arsenic. His eyes were narrowed and his visage pained and something was very obviously wrong. Or perhaps not so obviously as nobody else seemed to notice.

Except Mirrin. "What?" she asked him with a frown. "I can do it. The blast triggers are at the klick point. We just have to be generous in our estimation."

"How do you know about the triggers?" Cable asked accusingly, shaking his head either in disbelief or to shake off his earlier disturbance. "We never had any intel on that..."

"We never had any intel from our side," she corrected, giving him a meaningful look. "We always had intel."

Cable was about to say something when Cyclops cut him off. "Okay, so how do we know when we're a klick away? Away from what?"

"Away from the perimeter of the nest," Mirrin replied, holding out her hands to approximate the nest. "It should be a ring of structures surrounded closely by a barrier of motion detectors. Those are easy to knock out and are not meant as a defense."

Cyclops handed over the binoculars. "See if you can spot anything. I don't know what I'm looking for."

Cable took them.

"Maybe Ah can take a look," Cannonball offered. "A fly-by. Ah'll be blastin', so Ah'll be a mostly invulnerable movin' target."

Cyclops looked like he was about to dismiss the idea, so Cannonball went on.

"Our problem with the Kurioon hasn't been gettin' shot at," he reasoned, trying to school his posture into a more submissive one. It usually worked on Cable, who responded better to suggestions than challenges. "It's gettin' them to stop shooting. Ah've faced plasma guns before and Ah'm not going to be flyin' over the nest."

"You be careful," Cyclops said reluctantly. He really didn't like sending Sam alone near a possible Kurioon nest. He turned to Cable. "There's no chance he'll trigger the therms from the air?"

"They're built to keep humans away," Cable reminded him. "Humans don't fly."

Before anyone else could come up with any more suggestions (or, as earlier, before he could get forced into taking a co-pilot), Cannonball blasted into the air and off towards the remains of the volcano.

From the air, the pattern of ground growth was more readily apparent. Ancient lava flows had carved deep gullies in the sides, but while soil and flora had filled in many of the pockets many remained and provided additional shaded areas that weren't visible from where the others were.

As Cannonball flew north, something flashed below in the sun's rays. Out of the path of the reflected light, he could see a box of sorts on a pike. It looked like a lollipop, he thought idly, the kind with bubble gum on the inside.

Remembering how Mirrin's teleportation worked, Cannonball came to ground a few yards south of where the trees became denser. Not dimming his blast field, he looked around. Mindful of what she might need to see, he swept his gaze over the ground and trees, honing in on the distinctive curve one of the lower-growing plants close by had.

Satisfied at the attention to detail and wary of any approaching Kurioon soldiers, Cannonball took to the air and flew back quickly to the group, keeping a high altitude.

"Ah think Ah found something," he announced upon landing, turning straight to Mirrin and Cable. He pushed the memory forward and waited for Cable to slip past his shields and take a look at the out-of-place lollipop.

"That's it," Cable replied, turning to Mirrin. "There's nothing between there and the nest?"

"There never has been," Mirrin answered with a shrug. "Cannonball, did you..."

"Yes ma'am," Cannonball cut her off with a nod. He knew she hated when he called her that. He barely felt her access the memory Cable had just viewed. 

"Okay," Mirrin announced, slapping Cannonball's shields as she exited them as if to scold him. "I'm ready."

As long as it took to join together and link hands, it only a heartbeat until they were standing next to Cannonball's peculiarly curved yellow plant.

"Dayspring, do you feel that?" Mirrin asked, frowning.

Cable cocked his head and closed his eyes for a long moment and then re-opened them. "A psi-bubble?"

Mirrin furrowed her brow and nodded. "It feels like one."

"It doesn't make sense," Cable said. "Why would they use one here?"

"What are you two talking about?" Cyclops asked with mild irritation. With his own telepathic bond to his wife, he often forgot how much he hated it when telepaths kept things to themselves.

"Withholding information is unintentional. But there is something telepathically weird here," Jean explained, a curious expression on her face. "It's like being in a really crowded room with an echo, almost."

Cyclops eyed his wife for a moment. Well, perhaps he had been subconsciously leaking...

"It's a sort of psionic shielding," Mirrin explained, looking around carefully. "Apocalypse favored it as a means of dealing with the Askani. It has a not-dissimilar effect to that of the fish tank in the recreation room back at the mansion. It is mirrored on the inside so that we can look at the fish, but the fish can't see us."

Iceman tried to imagine this. "So we're the fish? Does this mean that we can't tell if someone is watching us?" Privately, he wondered about the X-Men's continued absolute reliance on the information from the two warriors from the future. They were getting thing wrong at truly inconvenient moments of late. If it were anyone but Cable, would Cyclops be so willing to follow?

"If they're outside the bubble, then no," Cable agreed. "Which is why it makes no sense. We'd have seen anyone here without them..."

"This is a trap, then," Domino concluded, more disappointed than distraught. This was one part of trailing after Nate that she didn't miss. "Typical with you. Out of the frying pan, into the oil fire."

"Summers family trait," Cable half-snarled at Domino, then turned casually to Iceman. "Right, Drake?"

Even as Iceman shook off his confusion -- he knew he had been keeping his thoughts to himself and couldn't recall any point in time when he had said something particularly nasty to Cable, although it was not as if a reason was necessary -- the group looked at each other and immediately fell into a defensive formation, backs to each other and weapons ready.

"They're hunting a telepath, so it makes sense to render that advantage null," Cable said as he scanned the horizon. With his telepathy limited to within the bubble, it was next to useless. Especially with the weird echo. That wasn't typical of the few psi-bubbles he had found himself inside during his battles with the Clan Chosen. "Especially since we took out theirs."

"Wonderful," Cyclops sighed. "Can we burst this bubble?"

"It's like any other psi-shielding," Cable replied. "It has borders."

"That lollipop Ah saw," Cannonball began. "Could that have been it?"

"The trigger?" Mirrin asked. "Perhaps. It would be a logical choice. Set off one while trying to disarm the other."

"So we either set off the bombs or go in almost headblind," Jean summarized. The longer the echo persisted, the more annoying it became and it was proving impossible to tune out.

"Mirrin, if we get stuck, can you get us out of here?" Cyclops asked, turning around to face her. He watched her close her eyes for a moment, then open them in awe.

"No," she said, absolutely mystified. "That's odd."

Through their psi-link, Domino felt Cable's stomach lurch and knew why.

"Well, if telepathic thought can't get outside of the bubble," Iceman trailed off.

"But that's never stopped me in the past," Mirrin contradicted, frowning at Iceman. "It's got to be something else."

"So we're stuck here until we figure out what that something else is?" Havok asked, willing his hands to stop glowing so brightly.

"Not necessarily," Cable replied. "We just have to get outside of the border of the bubble. It's not a physical border. We can just walk out."

"Question is whether we want to," Cyclops said. "We know it's a trap, but it's certainly not the first time we've walked into one aware. We're here and if we have a chance of stopping the Kurioon from doing any more damage..."

"Our telepathy, for practical purposes, is unaffected," Mirrin added. "We can communicate with each other; the echo -- whatever is causing it -- is annoying but not incapacitating."

"And it's not like it was a terribly effective weapon against the Kurioon," Havok said with a shrug. Trap though it may be, it wasn't an imminent one and he felt the tension of the group relax. "Their brains stay computerized no matter how much of the rest of them becomes flesh."

"So all we're going to lose is Mirrin's ability to teleport us out of trouble," Jean mused. "Which is just as well. It was a nice comfort, but hardly an absolute necessity. No offense, Min."

"None taken," the younger woman replied.

"Let's go," Cyclops said with a nod of his head in the direction of the trees.

This time, there was no musical accompaniment as they walked through the trees.

"This cluster of trees looked to be about half a kilometer wide from the air," Cannonball said as he moved closer to Cable. "The trigger was about a quarter behind it... we should be comin' right out into the nest almost."

"Theoretically," Cable agreed, pushing away a vine from in front of his face.

"What I want to know is where all of the soldiers are," Domino grumbled from the other side of him. "If we got... attacked right after landing the boat and that was last night, then where are the soldiers that met us?"

"They were hopefully the ones that we ran into while waiting for you," Havok said from where he was trailing behind. "Could they be at the nest?"

"They could be anywhere," Mirrin replied as she stepped carefully over a fern. "They're impossible to trace telepathically."

"Keep up the good news," Iceman sighed.

"How about the fact that there's just a clearing on the other side of these trees?" Cyclops asked from the front of the group.

"What?" Cable pushed past Cyclops ahead to where Jean stood and pointed. "That can't be."

But it was, as the octet found as they came through the last of the trees and beyond the small stone barrier that had once been the side of a volcano. The jagged rocky ground was occasionally broken up by plant life that had found purchase in soil deposits, but there was no sign of any sort of technology, let alone a Kurioon factory.

"It can't be," Cable repeated, searching around furiously for some sort of clue as Cannonball danced away from his bullish charge towards the tree. "There were satellite photos of the nest being extracted. There were the soldiers..."

"Maybe the camp is on some other part of the island," Cyclops mused vaguely. There really wasn't any other place it could be and the other islands had been searched. "Are you sure about the photos?"

"I saw them as well," Domino assured him as she moved towards the edge of the cliff. They hadn't checked the north side of the island, the part beyond the cliff. Although the Kurioon were too savvy to put a base on the beach below and leave it so open to attack from above.

"But they may be that arrogant," Jean replied.

"Stop picking through my head, Jean," Domino growled.

"That wasn't aloud?" Jean asked, horrified. "But I'm not... It's so hard to tell with this echo... I'm sorry. I really am." She hadn't been so surprised at accidentally reading someone's mind since she was a teenager...

Behind them, Cyclops and Iceman were examining the ground for any sort of devices or explosives.

"This was a wild goose chase?" Iceman asked incredulously as he spun around.

All of a sudden, Jean cried out in shocked agony as she fell to her knees. "What the...?"

Mirrin and Cable seemed to be similarly affected, the former holding her arms out to balance a world suddenly thrown off kilter as the latter looked around shakily, one golden eye blazing. The others to watch in confused horror.

"The echo's gone and so are our shields," Cable gritted out to Domino and Iceman. "Some kind of psi-attack."

"A better-laid trap than you expected?" Cannonball asked, or rather, was asked through him. His blue eyes were dull and vacant.

"Sam doesn't speak Askani that well," Havok said as he ran over to Mirrin, who was still hunched slightly and visibly shaken. He pulled her upright and into his arms in an attempt to get her attention. "What's going on?"

"He's not speaking Askani," Mirrin replied in a whisper, squinting as though to keep him in focus. "Our shields were stripped away... the bubble... we couldn't tell because of the echo... it's gone now... that's how they got to him... to any of us."

Cable, breathing heavily through clenched teeth spun, around angrily. "Show yourself!" he barked furiously.

Next to him, Domino, who had seen Cable in almost every type of battle, idly realized that this was as close as she had ever come to seeing him as the clan warrior he had been in his own time. There was a wildness in his eyes that she had seen only once before... with the Six Pack, facing down Stryfe over a disk...

Cyclops shifted the crumpled Jean in his arms so that he had a free hand to go to his visor if needs be. Through his telepathic bond to his wife he could feel her agony, but he had six others to be worried about as well.

"And we shall call ourselves Clan Chosen," a woman's voice announced mockingly, still sight unseen. It was a melodic voice, even in its cruelty (obvious even to those who didn't understand the language).

"Oh, Bright Lady no," Mirrin whispered in Askani, a gasp catching in her throat.

Havok watched her twist in his arms to look for Cable, who looked similarly stricken. "You know who this is."

"What's the matter, Ay'el?" the musical voice asked mockingly. "No false tears from a false friend, please."

Mirrin nodded, closing her eyes in pain as tears fell, but Havok wasn't sure if it was from the psychical or emotional distress. A heartbeat later, he could feel her back stiffen. "I thought I did," she said mournfully. "Apparently, I was wrong."

A rustling from the trees drew everyone's attention and the woman who appeared was in everyone's gunsight before she came out of the shadows completely.

"Welcome to Hell, Dayspring."

***

back to the index


	25. FP 25: Shatter

Future Pluperfect: Chapter 25 

* * *

Textual Poaching Alert: Marvel owns everyone but Mirrin, although Social Services would have stripped custody long ago...

* * *

Kitty Pryde had been an X-Man of some sort since she was fourteen and Mandroids had come marching through the soda shop. Through a few different incarnations of teams - through a few different teams - she had long ago learned to take things with aplomb. People were dead and then they got better. The world was ending and then decided not to. Seemingly invincible aliens invaded Earth only to be turned back at the last possible moment. Wormholes in the fabric of space-time opened up on whims and best friends appeared and disappeared because of it.

If Kitty had to pick a moment when she stopped being surprised by anything, she'd probably say her adventures in Tokyo if only because the shock to the system had been so complete. It was one thing when trouble found the X-Men - Kitty had long ago known first hand that every alien in the multiverse had detailed directions to the mansion in Westchester - but it was a completely different kettle of kippered herring when it was your own family. (Except for Scott because Summerses just don't count.) Pryde Père et Fille had nearly been turned into demons - one figuratively and one literally -- on that adventure and Kitty had had the last of her cherished idols of childhood shattered.

So it was with a cool brow and a steady set of hands that Kitty fiddled with the computer interface in one of the Kurioon buildings. With the eerie glow from the cyborg tanks behind her and the occasional chatter of teammates in her ears, Kitty was at home amidst the panic. Either the world was going to end or it wasn't. And if there was one thing consistent about the X-Men, it was that for as much as trouble found them, escape routes tended to find them also.

"Any sudden bouts of inspiration?" Psylocke asked from behind her. As the sole telepath among the group, Betsy was left to coordinate efforts and network the various parties as the radio headsets were proving hit-and-miss propositions within the Kurioon complex. It was not a task she was especially suited for or one that she enjoyed at all. Even before the Hand (courtesy of the Siege Perilous) had left her with a body intended as a formidable primary weapon, Betsy's dislike of the intimate nature of telepathic connections had prompted her to use external 'mental butterflies' instead of the direct access favored by Charles and Jean. And yet here she was hopping in and out of nine other people's minds.

"I'd be doing a lot better if I could read what I was typing," Kitty replied without looking up. "No chance that you picked up a knowledge of thirty-eighth century languages while battling wits with Mirrin and Cable, eh?"

Psylocke's sigh was answer enough.

The screen was filled with gibberish. Kitty didn't even know if it made sense in its own language. The keyboard looked like a standard Western European set-up, but there were a ton of characters that didn't look familiar and it had become quite obvious that English wasn't a language the operating system was familiar with.

"No chance it's got somethin' easy like a Unix shell, hein?" Gambit asked from across the room where he was examining some exposed wiring on the off chance that the nest could be disabled by a simple short-circuit.

The others were scattered throughout the complex looking for clues. Nobody had any idea of how much or how little time they had before the thermonuclear weapons Mirrin had warned them about would detonate - if they would detonate. Archangel had been quite blunt in his statement that Cable and Mirrin were not exactly unquestionable resources anymore. Kitty had been away from the X-Men for too long to pick up on most of the subtlety of Warren's insinuations, but she really didn't care to be filled in. Not when Storm had creased her brow in that way that Kitty knew was her best effort to bite back an unleaderlike retort.

"I don't think we're going to be that lucky," Kitty sighed as she typed in every universal override command she knew. "And I am so not a software person..."

"Would that Doug were here," Psylocke murmured in agreement. "But I am sure that you'll come up with something."

"If only because I still hold the record for most times crashing the Danger Room network drive," Kitty replied, leaning back and eyeing the screen thoughtfully. "Actually... That might be it."

"What might be it?"

"Instead of trying to re-invent the wheel, why not just go with what works?" Kitty asked as she turned around to face Psylocke. "We all know how to make the Danger Room go boom, right? Well, this is the Danger Room of the Real. All of the comforts of home, but no re-set button."

"It's a wager," Psylocke cautioned, "But I will be the first to admit that we are rapidly running out of less... hunch-based ideas."

Kitty was aware that most of the others were still skeptical of her assertion that the Kurioon technology was almost identical to certain components of the Danger Room at home. It was an incredible claim on the face of it, although Kitty privately thought it no more outrageous than what they had previously thought to be the truth (that the technology was Shi'ar in origin).

"You t'ink we can break everythin' like we do at home?" Gambit asked, tilting his head thoughtfully and putting down the wire strippers that had miraculously appeared out of his pocket earlier. "Well, I'm sure we can; but you really t'ink that'll do the trick?"

Kitty watched Gambit, inwardly amused that she could almost see the proverbial gears turning in his mind. Gambit had accepted her claims about the technological similarities without batting an eye. In fact while Kitty had been speaking, he had made some gesture in Rogue's direction as if to indicate that this information jibed with what he already knew. Of course, Gambit had had the most extensive dealings with Mirrin of anyone present, so...

"It perhaps might work," the voice of Storm could be heard through the headsets. "I do not believe in luck to the extent that we would be able to credit the ease with which we have entered the Kurioon complex simply to good fortune and the experience of a few thieves."

"Mirrin and Cable made it sound like the nests were these impenetrable fortresses we'd never breach," Rogue added, her voice coming through faintly. "And here we are."

"It would not be the first time we have been lulled into a false sense of security," Nightcrawler said, materializing suddenly next to Gambit, who made a moue of disgust as the smell of sulfur wafted past him. "The Kurioon think they have won, remember? They can afford to waste a few resources to make sure they get us the first time, ja?"

"It's too fancy," Wolverine's gravely voice came through the radio clearly. "Kurioon's never been delicate when it's come to disposin' of warm bodies. They got the same sense o' subtlety as Cable - no point usin' a popgun when you got a cannon. They wouldn't lull us into anything; they'd just line us up and blow us away."

"And since they haven't yet," Colossus continued, his voice cutting in and out as he was on the opposite side of the camp with Beast and Archangel trying to open up and dismantle the series of important-looking boxes Shadowcat had first tried to scan. "It does beg the question of why they have not. The Kurioon does not like to waste time, either."

"I think you should take that as a nearly unanimous vote to come up with a good idea for how to recreate the Danger Room," Psylocke said as she put a hand on Kitty's shoulder, a wry smile playing on her lips.

Kitty took the expression for what it was - a joke transmitted telepathically that wasn't going to be repeated aloud.

"Well, this has to be a collaborative effort," she replied. "What's everyone's most spectacular memory of making things go wrong?"

***

A rustling from the trees drew everyone's attention and the woman who appeared was in everyone's gun sight before she came out of the shadows completely.

"Welcome to Hell, Dayspring."

"Dawnsilk," Cable said flatly.

She was not alone. Six Kurioon soldiers, yellow stripes on their helmets and chest plates, joined her with their plasma guns drawn.

"I believe the expression in Olde English is 'Drop your weapons'," Dawnsilk said with a delighted laugh as the Kurioon soldiers circled the group and came to rest with their hands on their weapons.

"Do it," Cyclops ordered, unsure if this person - whom Cable and Mirrin obviously knew - was aware of the fact that the X-Men rarely fought with firearms anyway.

The team complied and plasma rifles were dropped to the ground. The only sound was the barrel of Jean's weapon hitting a rock.

"To answer the question that is going through your very open mind," Dawnsilk said as she strolled towards the team. "I am a clone, but I am not a clone. A sound mind in a sound body. Me as I should have been, not what you turned me into."

She circled around the octet, looking at each person like she was a visitor in a museum. Pausing in front of Cyclops, she reached up and tapped the bridge of his visor with her index finger, chuckling to herself as he fought the impulse to pull away.

When she got to Mirrin and Havok, Dawnsilk snorted outright and turned away. After she did so, Mirrin looked over her shoulder at Havok and answered his raised eyebrow with a frown.

"You were right, Dayspring, nobody could fix what was wrong with me," Dawnsilk went on as she passed by Cannonball and eyed him carefully. "But even with all of our technology and you, Mirrin, with your harem of mind-witches with cloning tanks that you refused to use... There were other options. I found someone who was less willing to sacrifice their friends for their ideology."

"So you became friends with the Canaanites?" Cable asked with an ugly snort.

"When they offer me gifts like this?" Dawnsilk asked as she pirouetted back towards him, stopping in front of Domino, who looked sorely unimpressed. "It was a very easy decision."

Sam watched the mysterious woman - Dawnsilk -- spin around in curious horror. Whoever she was, she had obviously meant something to Cable at some point. With everyone's mental shields stripped away, the mental link that had been created between them during their time together in X-Force had been exposed and Sam could faintly feel Cable's shock and disgust.

Looking over at Domino and then Phoenix and Cyclops, Sam could sense they felt the same mix of trepidation and confusion. Especially with their link to Cable being so much stronger than his own. Iceman and Havok just look concerned and confused, although until Dawnsilk switched into English again, everyone but Mirrin and Cable would be the same, left to watch and wonder.

"What was the cost, 'Silk?" Mirrin asked as she turning to follow Dawnsilk's progress. Havok kept his hands on her shoulders and she resisted the urge to lean into the comfort they offered. With their shields gone, Mirrin could hear his thoughts and didn't want to add that complication to a situation rapidly spiraling out of control. "What did you have to give up besides your heart and your soul?"

"Give up?" Dawnsilk repeated with a giggle. "I gave up nothing but a battle-scarred body and the prison of a destroyed mind. I gave up never being able to stop running."

"Why?" Cable asked in a harsh voice devoid of emotion. "Why would you betray your family for... this? Once you were willing to die for our cause."

"Your cause, Dayspring, your cause." Dawnsilk replied mournfully as she walked all the way over to Cable, reaching out to pat his cheek even as he flinched away.

"I didn't betray Clan Chosen," Dawnsilk said, her voice sickeningly sweet. "You did when you left us to fight your war. Twenty years we waited. Twenty years since you left with Kane. Enough was enough. Clan Chosen exists no longer -- everyone's dead or fled."

Nathan's mind flashed to Tetherblood and Hope, his closest family, and to all of the people who had been part of the Clan as it had stood upon his last departure from the thirty-eighth century.

"Dead and dead," Dawnsilk replied with a casual shrug.

If either Nathan or Mirrin were surprised at Dawnsilk's newfound psionic abilities, they weren't saying anything.

"Did you kill them?" Mirrin asked, schooling her anger to remain buried.

"Tetherblood was a sweet man," Dawnsilk said to her by way of reply. "He stayed faithful to Dayspring's memory until the end. You wanted to know the cost?... He welcomed it, I think. A chance to rest... Hope, well, she died on the battlefield. The last great stand of the Clan Chosen. We got slaughtered."

Jean watched the scene unfold with studied blandness. She could make out most of the conversation - the dialect they were using was not dissimilar to that used in Crestcoast - but couldn't understand much of the context. Nathan spoke so infrequently of the Clan Chosen, of his life in general after she and Scott had been dragged away from him. It was obvious that they were in danger and it was just as obvious that she should keep her partial awareness as quiet as possible.

"I came to an understanding a few years ago," Dawnsilk went on. "I'm a mercenary. I've been a mercenary my whole life. I kill for food, steal for shelter, and destroy for profit. I used to be in your employ, Dayspring, but the Canaanites pay better."

"You sacrificed your clanmates for your own comfort?" Cable asked quietly, eye flashing angrily despite the mild tone. "You took a blood oath to them."

"Who was left?" Dawnsilk asked. She shrugged casually and tapped her temple with an index finger. "Even in the fractured little world you left me in, Dayspring, I understood the difference between loyalty and stupidity. How long before faith melts into foolishness? How long did you think we would last before we realized that you weren't coming to save us, that you were out for your own cause and our continued survival was nothing but a happy coincidence to your grand plan?"

"I never intended to abandon you," Cable said. His expression remained impassive, but it was easy to see the maelstrom just below the surface. To a warrior, the greatest sin was betrayal. "I left to save you all."

"What good is salvation if it comes too late?" Dawnsilk asked bitterly. "What good is it if I can't benefit from it? What good is it if it means ensuring that I never exist?"

"When did you get so selfish, 'Silk?" Mirrin asked, letting the disgust seep into her voice. "When did fighting for a better tomorrow become contingent on you being a part of it?"

"Selfish?" Dawnsilk repeated in surprise, wheeling angrily to face Mirrin. "This coming from you of all people?"

Behind her, Mirrin could feel Havok tense slightly as Dawnsilk turned back towards them. He still had his hands on her shoulders and he squeezed lightly as Dawnsilk approached. Mirrin didn't spare the moment to tell him that defending her was not only not needed, but could be absolutely counter to their survival.

"Selfish?" Dawnsilk asked again, a withering laugh accompanying the word. "You who took Aliya back in time to visit that coven and seduced her into going back into the arms of that Askani madwoman when she wanted nothing more to do with it... You call _me_ selfish?"

Mirrin stood impassively, not reacting physically to the words. Whore, traitor, mindless sheep, spy, killer... she had long ago let accusations as to the nature of her character go without reaction. There was only one person whose opinion mattered and she wasn't here right now.

"Don't you think we noticed that you gave your favors unequally?" Dawnsilk asked, an almost honest curiosity playing across her face. "Don't you think we saw how you'd save Dayspring no matter what but then couldn't be found to teleport to safety those who were dying on the field? Don't you think everyone wanted to know why you never saved Aliya?" She gave an ugly laugh. "Even Dayspring wondered - he wonders now. Can't you hear it in his head? I can."

"I owe you no justification, Dawnsilk," Mirrin replied coldly, ignoring the conflicting emotions pouring out of Nathan. Dawnsilk was right - he did wonder why she had never saved Aliya. And, true to Nathan, he felt guilty about wondering, torn between his faith that Mirrin would never do anything to hurt Aliya and his ever-present lack of trust in her own ability to see past the Askani mission. It wasn't always the people on the other side who called her names. "Aliya understood and that's all that matters. I'm not going to apologize for not explaining things to you."

Dawnsilk shrugged, then gestured with her chin at Cable. "I don't think I ever realized that Dayspring trusts you no more than we did... It's amazing what I can see now... all of your defenses stripped away. All of your insecurities and doubts open to me. All of your power."

She suddenly turned around and walked over to Iceman, smiling ingeniously as he stared back at her uncomprehending and concerned.

"All I have to do is think about doing something," Dawnsilk said to him, voice filled with wonder. "And you do it."

Iceman cried out as his hand started to freeze up, the ice traveling up his arm in a heartbeat before slowing down as he tried to wrest control of his powers back. He seemed to be losing the battle until Dawnsilk laughed suddenly and turned away, leaving Iceman to fall back onto the ground, breathing heavily and shaking.

"I don't think I ever understood what kind of a fool you were, Dayspring," Dawnsilk said as she walked back to him, passing by Phoenix and eyeing her curiously. "Until I came to this time. So much power and you waste it."

"What do you want, 'Silk?" Cable asked tiredly. "You didn't come here-and-now to toy with us."

"True," she replied casually. "I came here to kill you. No more Dayspring, no more Askani, no more challenge to Apocalypse. You die and I live."

"So why are you wasting time?" Cable asked.

"Because I want to enjoy it," Dawnsilk answered. "I have no intention of granting you easy passage out of this life. Not when I can make you suffer like you made me suffer."

Your own little clan, here in your native time," she continued, switching to heavily accented English as she turned and walked among the X-Men. "All happy and wealthy, mutants like you, not flatscans like us. Clan Chosen was the prototype, the beta test. Make your mistakes with us and get it right the next time."

Dawnsilk stopped in front of Cannonball again. "The boy even looks like Tyler. If I had let you live, would you screw this pup up as well? Remember that he's not your own kith and kin and abandon him in his time of need? Abandon him like you did all of us?"

With everyone's shields broken down and Dawnsilk obviously in possession of some kind of psionic control, Sam wasn't surprised that she saw him start at her words, the memories of Cable's various flights from X-Force coming to the surface unbidden.

"You already have," Dawnsilk laughed. "Oh, Dayspring, you are so precious. And so pathetic. You don't even learn from your own mistakes. It's just as well you won't live to make any more."

Now that the conversation was switching into English, the others became a little more active. Cyclops, Domino, and Cannonball automatically shifted into less submissive postures and Iceman picked himself up off of the ground.

Mirrin caught glances with Cable as Dawnsilk moved out of their line of sight. He returned a look that bespoke all business, although Mirrin wasn't so sure how much of that was an honest ability to move past Dawnsilk's too-accurate words and how much was the simple realization that the only way to avoid having your brain picked by a telepath was to intentionally think of nothing. Probably the latter.

"Let's see, where should I start," Dawnsilk mused as she turned around slowly.

***

The group had assembled in one of the cloning buildings to brainstorm together, sitting down on stools and overturned buckets and ignoring the burbling noises that came from the cyborg tanks.

And a half-hour later, Kitty was getting a pretty good idea of how best to disable the Kurioon nest.

Not surprisingly, the common thread of everyone's tales of mishap involved their various mutant powers. Originally, this had been taken for granted - the Shi'ar were technologically superior to Earth-bound humans, but they had no special abilities of their own.

"As has oft been the case in past adventures," the Beast mused as he tapped his cheek with one clawed finger, "Our opponents could perhaps have overestimated the advantage of technology."

"The Kurioon was built to... neutralize humans," Archangel agreed, feathers fluttering in revulsion. "So it would make sense that we could surprise them a little..."

"Too bad we aren't immune to them as we were the Phalanx," Psylocke said wistfully as she looked around. It had been a nauseating feeling to realize that the cloning tanks were probably powered by the energy gathered by the Harvesters.

"So what do we have here," Kitty murmured as she looked around at her cohort. "Trouble caused by powers of flight, by energy surges, by superhuman strength and dexterity, and by... unexpected disappearances, for lack of a better term," she finished, smiling crookedly at Nightcrawler and Psylocke.

"Not to be the party pooper here," Rogue spoke up from where she was sitting on what was probably an overturned garbage can, "But we still don't know why the whole installation hasn't exploded yet. Thermonuclear weapons, remember?"

The group was silent for a moment until Gambit chuckled to himself... "Peut-être Psylocke got her wish. Mebbe we are immune like with the Phalanx. If the Kurioon thinks de good guys are the mutants and de bad guys are the humans..."

"Then there is no reason for the alarms to have been triggered," Archangel finished, a smile dawning on his face.

"But what about Cable and Mirrin?" Colossus pointed out. "They are both mutant enemies of the Kurioon. In fact the Kurioon was supposed to be sent back here to find Cable."

"And that group Mirrin belongs to - the one Cable's supposed to be the messiah for," Psylocke added, pushing off of the wall she had been leaning against. "The Askani. They were all mutants, yes?"

"If I recall correctly the tale Cyclops and Phoenix told of their honeymoon in the future," the Beast said slowly, "The Askani were considered extinct by the time young Cable was out of diapers. While that does raise the interesting question as to Mirrin's own provenance, it would explain why the Kurioon would not be programmed to consider them a threat."

"Th' Askani weren't dead," Gambit spoke up, earning curious stares. "Mirrin said somethin' bout that once. They weren't killed off 'til Cable was grown."

"Well, that would grant even further credence to the theory that the Kurioon would not consider them a threat, if not necessarily answering the question about Mirrin's background," the Beast replied.

"And Cable?" Kitty asked.

"Cable was part of a war clan," Storm answered. "As leader, he would have rarely been alone on a mission. Certainly not on the most dangerous ones. It would not be a great leap to assume that he was never the sole penetrator of a Kurioon nest."

"From what Mirrin was talkin' about, neither she nor Cable had been part of a Kurioon raiding party," Wolverine said.

"They were working from anecdotal evidence," the Beast agreed. "The two of them might not know if a mutant-only expedition would pass undetected."

"Well," Kitty said as she swiveled her seat to look at everyone else, "Now that we've come up with a working theory on why things haven't blown up, let's start working on a way to undo it."

"We can generalize our history of Danger Room difficulties into problems of confrontation and problems of avoidance," Storm reviewed thoughtfully. "Our next question is to decide where to apply these conclusions."

"Gotta find something to confront," Wolverine pointed out. "Or at least figure out if anything's gonna stop us just dismantling this place."

***

Iceman dusted himself off and tried to keep his thoughts as quiet as he could. Dawnsilk's touch in his head had been clumsy, wobbly almost, and reminded him of a new-born colt trying to stand. He wished he remembered if Mirrin's telepathy had been affected by time displacement, if perhaps this unsureness could be used...

His head jerked up as Dawnsilk barked a command in whatever language she had been speaking in before. Cable roared something back in defiance and Iceman could feel the weird stillness that came with a telekinetic shield being drawn up around them...and then fading away.

One of the Kurioon soldiers opened fire on Jean, who deflected the blast with her own telekinesis.

The other five soldiers trained their guns on Cyclops, who had moved towards his wife.

"Adequate," Dawnsilk said dismissively to Phoenix as the latter woman stood up from where she had been driven to her knees by the force of the plasma blast. Before Phoenix could retort, Dawnsilk turned away and waggled her finger at Iceman. "Don't you even try to freeze anyone. I can hear you think through every move. I am not as vulnerable as you think I am."

"Now you see how easily I can play with your mind," she turned and told Cable. "I can turn off your telekinesis just like that," she said, snapping her fingers for emphasis. "And then where would your sickness take you? Maybe that will be how I kill you. Letting the virus do its work. Especially now that I know which one is the other telekinetic so I know who to kill rather than let her hold you together."

"Leave the others alone," Cable ground out. "If it's me you want, then fine. Let the others go."

"No," Dawnsilk replied with a laugh. "Because I'm not about to do anything that's going to let your little pet Askani run off for help. You all die. And you get to be the last so that you can watch it all happen. Unlike the last time."

Havok watched the scene unfold and waited. Past experience with telepaths gone bad - see 'Pryor, Madelyne' - had left him with the knowledge that just because someone could see into everyone's heads didn't mean they could do it all at once. All he had to do was keep his mind quiet and wait for Dawnsilk to be busy before asking Mirrin what the hell was going on and what could they do about it.

"She's drunk on the power," Mirrin whispered to him. "The Dawnsilk I knew should have already closed down our minds and taken off our heads..."

"You're going to have to explain all of this to me later," he replied in a similarly low voice, watching as Dawnsilk was taunting Cable in whatever language it was that they both spoke.

Mirrin nodded, but said nothing else as Dawnsilk turned away from Cable and came towards them.

"I want to be close to you when I do this," Dawnsilk told Mirrin with a gleeful smile that was a sickening contrast to the cold cruelty in her eyes. "I want to watch you betray everything you've ever held dear."

Mirrin raised her chin defiantly and Dawnsilk laughed. "Keep your hands on her," Dawnsilk told Havok. "She's going to need all the support she can get."

"What are you going to do?" Cyclops asked from behind them.

"Did you ever hear about what your grandson did to me?" Dawnsilk asked, not turning around to face him. Instead, she kept her eyes on Mirrin, waiting for realization to dawn. "Broke my mind into such tiny pieces that nobody could put it back together. Nobody."

All of a sudden, Cable doubled over, holding his head.

"Stop," Mirrin yelled. "Drop the neural link."

"Why?" Cable asked in a voice that was clearly not his. He looked up, head tilted in curiosity. "You know what has to be done."

"No," Mirrin hissed.

Phoenix ran over to where Cable knelt on the ground. She tried to turn his face towards her, but was swept aside in a telekinetic wave and flew through the air, landing near Cannonball, who crouched to protect her.

"Time is wasting, Ay'el," Cable (Dawnsilk) called in a sing-song voice, his expression oddly cheerful.

All of a sudden, Domino cried out and fell to the ground, clearly unconscious.

"Drop the link," Mirrin growled.

"Do unto others as has been done unto you," Cable continued.

Cannonball crumpled next to the fallen Phoenix.

"The next one won't be as gentle," Dawnsilk warned.

"Mirrin," Cyclops called out. "Do it!"

"I could kill him," Mirrin yelled back.

"Cable wouldn't want you to sacrifice everyone for him," Cyclops replied, his mental voice not nearly as collected as his spoken one.

"That's what you're betting on, isn't it?" Mirrin asked Dawnsilk with an angry hiss.

"Girl's not as stupid as she acts," Dawnsilk told Havok approvingly.

"Three, two, one," Cable called out, pointing his outstretched arm first at Iceman, then at Mirrin and Havok, then at Cyclops. "Boo..."

The word was cut off as Mirrin raised her arm as the bracelet weapon extended over her hand and took a step forward to free herself from Havok's arms, firing at Cable.

Cable grunted in pain and fell backwards with the blast. Closer to Mirrin, Dawnsilk took a step back as the neural link was shaken.

Havok took a step closer to Mirrin as she fired again.

This time, Havok thought the neural link must have snapped as Dawnsilk sucked her breath in sharply and stumbled and the prone form of Cable shuddered before lying still.

Havok caught Mirrin as she grabbed her own head and cried out before collapsing.

Dawnsilk laughed as Havok crouched to lay Mirrin down gently. He was at too awkward an angle to scoop her up. From the new perspective, he could see that Cyclops, too, had been felled.

"Feedback," Dawnsilk explained. "All of the psionic energy from the link being broken had to get out somehow. Whoever you and he," and here she gestured towards the horrified Iceman, the only other one standing, "are, you don't have any sort of mental links to Dayspring."

"What do you want now?" Havok asked coldly, resisting the urge to wipe the tears away from Mirrin's closed eyes.

"I'll settle for you and your friend coming quietly," Dawnsilk said after a moment. "We have a little time before round two."

***

http://www.geocities.com/nikimarzione/ 


	26. FP 26: Falling In

Future Pluperfect: Chapter 26 

* * *

Textual Poaching Alert: Marvel owns everyone but Mirrin, although Social Services would have stripped custody long ago...

* * *

This time, there was no whistling. 

Dawnsilk walked behind Havok and Iceman, plasma weapon aimed at their backs as they marched with their hands on their heads. Behind her, the six Kurioon soldiers each carried a fallen X-Man. 

The walk was not very long and not very far, which was just as well as the one time Bobby had to remove his hands from his head to keep his balance after stumbling, he had nearly gotten shot for the effort. Back through the woods and into the rocky area where they had first teleported - where they had first realized that it was a trap. 

Bobby looked around furtively, trying to see if there was anything around that could have, in hindsight, tipped them off about what would follow. 

Of course, that implied that Bobby himself could figure out what had happened. Or what was happening. 

Dawnsilk was obviously someone from Cable's and Mirrin's past, Bobby felt safe in assuming this as he began his mental checklist of the facts. She seemed to know who Scott was - at least that's what had to be the likely explanation behind the 'grandson' comment - and that would mean she probably knew who Jean was, although that wasn't really an issue right now. 

What else did he know, Bobby mused as he felt the business end of a plasma rifle poke into his back and direct him off towards a part of the island they had not previously traversed. He knew that Dawnsilk really didn't like Mirrin. Cable she seemed to be more interested in doing away with for personal survival reasons - the single most popular reason for doing away with any Summers - although Bobby was sure there was something grudge-related there as well. He really wished he had been around to pay more attention to the whole Tyler mess. 

They marched on, towards a small grouping of trees that was deceptively thick in terms of leaf coverage. On the other side sat a large pit that looked like an empty swimming pool. 

"Get in," Dawnsilk said and jabbed Bobby in the back. He looked over his shoulder and was rewarded with another poke. "Now."

Watching Alex out of the corner of his eyes, Bobby crouched to lower himself in. He was rewarded by nearly losing his balance as one of the soldiers marched up behind him and dumped Jean in over him, the way Hank used to do at the pool behind the mansion back when they were all kids and the Professor had given them some time off. Except this time the pool was empty and, factoring in the height of the Kurioon soldier, Jean had at least a fifteen-foot drop.

Instinctively, Bobby tried to build a snow mattress to cushion her fall. But nothing happened and Jean came to ground with a dull thud, her limp body rebounding slightly and gaining an eerie momentary animation before coming to rest in an awkward heap. 

"Inhibitor field," Dawnsilk explained cheerfully as Bobby landed awkwardly next to Jean at the bottom of the pit. He had to bunny-hop to avoid falling over onto her and ended up instead on his rear. Alex, who was on his feet a short distance away, seemed content to leave Jean to Bobby and was trying to catch the others as they were tossed into the pit. 

Making Alex's task more difficult was the fact that the soldiers were not depositing their cargo in sequence. With Bobby left to drag the bodies away from where they had fallen, Alex managed to break Cyclops's fall and caught Mirrin. But gravity's effect on Cable's bulk was best avoided and, when faced with trying to stand under either Cannonball or Domino, Alex had to choose practicality over chivalry as Sam was being dangled head-first and had no blast-field to protect him from a neck injury. 

"I'll be back," Dawnsilk said as she stood at the lip of the pit. "I'd say don't try to escape, but you will anyway and I'd rather not have to start the... punishments... for failing to listen to instructions so early on. The soldiers will be waiting for you at the conclusion of your climb up."

With that, she disappeared. 

Bobby looked at Alex, who was trying to re-arrange the unconscious against the wall that was already falling into shadow as the sun progressed across the sky. 

"This wasn't part of the plan, I'm guessing."

Alex didn't stop what he was doing. "No, I'm pretty sure it wasn't."

"What really concerns me," Bobby replied, coming over to where Alex had stationed Domino and Sam against the wall, "Is that they didn't leave us a chamber pot. The only thing more embarrassing about having to pee in public is having to do it against a dirt wall. It leaves a mark."

Somewhere between his shtick as official team jester and the unavoidable fact that he was one of the most experienced X-Men whether he liked it or not, Bobby was aware of the fact that his cheerful abrogation of any leadership responsibilities only went as far as was convenient. Everyone knew that Bobby was only playing clueless, but they went along with it because to do otherwise was to admit that every joke had a purpose. At his most maudlin, Bobby occasionally wondered when his entire personality had been subjugated to the team's need for a pressure valve and his own personal need for a coping mechanism.

"We can always dig a hole," Alex, another king of the inappropriately timed observation, replied. Instead of reminding Bobby that they had other things to worry about, like surviving, he simply handed him the utility belt that had caught on his hand when he had tried to slow Cannonball's descent.

Bobby looked at the belt and shook it slightly. Things in the various pockets rattled around, but none escaped the snapped covers. He'd let Sam open it when he woke up. Whenever that would be. Getting your brain turned off by a telepath wasn't like getting knocked out with a well-aimed crack to the head. If your switch was turned off, it had to be turned on again, Bobby imagined. 

"I'm gonna need your help moving Cable," Alex said as he stood up out of his crouch. 

Bobby nodded and dropped the belt in Sam's lap. "I'm all for leaving him where he is," he said as they approached. Cable's sheer mass had indented the ground under where his hip had landed. 

"Yeah, well, I'm his uncle and all," Alex replied, pushing Cable's shoulder so that the man lay on his back. Suddenly, he jumped back with a yelp. 

"What?" Bobby asked from where he was uncrossing Cable's ankles. 

"The inhibitor field is blocking his ability to hold back the virus," Alex explained with a mildly disgusted frown. "I wasn't prepared for the rolling, bubbling metal skin."

"That's going to be a problem, isn't it?" Bobby asked rhetorically as he walked over to stand by Cable's shoulder on the opposite side from Alex, all sense of whimsy-in-chaos gone. The creep of the techno-organic virus was slow, but the already-affected areas were quite actively reverting to what was probably their natural form. "Especially since even if we can wake Jean up, her telekinesis isn't going to be working, either."

"Well, let's get him out of the sun at any rate," Alex said by way of agreement. "I don't know if heat makes it worse, but it certainly isn't making it better."

With great effort, they dragged Cable back to the wall to rest near the others. They kept him a little apart, not sure of how much of a risk to the others the T-O might become while it remained unchecked. 

Slightly drained from the effort, the two men slumped against the wall. 

"We should try to take a look at what's going on at the surface," Alex said after a moment. 

"Without getting our heads blown off in the process," Bobby replied. 

"Dawnsilk almost invited us to do so," Alex said, standing up and seemingly looking for a spot that might have some handholds. "She's not worried that we'll actually escape."

Bobby stood up next to him. "I don't get her. I'm tempted to say she's not taking us seriously, but let's face it, we're the ones stuck in the pit."

"Mirrin seemed a little... not confused, but a little surprised," Alex confirmed. "The Dawnsilk she knew wasn't this arrogant, I think."

"Well, maybe that will be her undoing," Bobby suggested hopefully. "It won't be the first time. That's gotta be on the top ten of the Evil Overlord checklist. Right after not having buttons marked 'Danger, do not press' and explaining to your captive arch-enemy why you need to do your dastardly plan... which come to think of it, I'm willing to bet that she did to Mirrin and Cable. This seemingly hopeless situation might get a lot less so once one of them wakes up."

"Maybe," Alex agreed as he tried to climb up the wall. "But if we don't get one of them up soon, we're going to have a completely different set of problems - starting with my rapidly morphing nephew."

The Kurioon soldiers who had dug the pit had obviously known what they were doing - or were at least being controlled by someone who was. The walls sloped slightly inward, like a flask, using gravity to make scaling the wall was almost impossible. Alex got about two feet off the ground before the angle of inclination combined with the sandy quality of the soil forced him to drop back down. "I think we're going to have to boost one of us up to the top."

"So, how are we deciding who is giving who a lift up?" Bobby asked with a nod. "Rock-paper-scissors? Odds-and-evens?"

"I'll boost you," Alex replied. "You're smaller and I'm stronger."

"Definitely a man who knows his way around a compliment," Bobby snorted as he followed Alex to the side of the pit where they had been dumped in. He put his foot on the step made by Alex's clasped hands. 

"And to think that I lost Lorna to you," he added as Alex boosted him up.

Bobby could hear Alex muttering something obscene in reply, but his attention was now on holding on to the edge of the pit and kicking himself footholds in the dirt wall of their prison. 

Bobby felt like a kid sneaking over to the dessert table at Thanksgiving as he slowly inched his head above the level of the ground. He was able to keep a relatively low profile and thanked genetics for a granting him a low forehead and the salt-water sea for flattening his hair against his scalp.

Dawnsilk was right; the six Kurioon soldiers were standing evenly spaced around the perimeter of the pit, about three meters back from the edge. Bobby looked around for the borders of the inhibitor field; they had to be closer than the soldiers were else Dawnsilk would be unable to control her own troops. Bobby thought he saw what might be a spike in the ground and was trying to find a matching one when a plasma bolt whizzed close enough over his head to hear the buzz as it passed. 

"Get down if they're shooting at you," Alex called from below. 

"No kidding," Bobby replied and dropped down to the ground. 

"Well?" Alex asked once Bobby had come to his feet again.

"I got good news and bad news."

***

"What's the problem, mon ami?" Gambit asked Colossus as he built up the energy charge in his hands and transferred it to the wall of the cloning-tank house. "You look a little blue for an homme on the winning side."

They heard the telltale click of the primary power generator's fuse blowing. At that moment, Wolverine stuck his claws into the smooth metal skin of the structure and tore; suddenly withdrawing a heartbeat before a second click - the sound of the backup generator kicking in - was audible. Gambit and Wolverine repeated the process twice more until Wolverine got far enough to peel a section of the skin away and reveal the part of the unit's guts that Shadowcat had suspected to be the secondary generator.

"I don't know whether it is suspicion that things are going too easily," Colossus answered with a sigh as he waited for Wolverine to slice through wires and switches. Until that point, all he could do was hold the flashlight. "Or disappointment at my own cynicism."

Damage done, Wolverine sheathed his claws with a 'Snikt' and stepped back so that Colossus could lift the newly-unattached generator out of its housing. Removal was important, they had realized, after the Beast had nearly been fried dismantling a thought-to-be-disengaged unit. The makers of the structure had created several redundant connectors. Almost anything could go wrong and the power would still be accessible... so long as the unit was where it was supposed to be. 

"Nothin' wrong with being cautious," Wolverine replied with a shrug after Colossus had put down the generator. 

"Da, but," Colossus trailed off sadly. 

"Don't you be gettin' thoughts 'bout leaving again," Gambit warned, waggling his index finger at the larger man. "Your last time-out cost us a fortune in repairs."

Wolverine was about to add a rude comment about the mating habits of certain Acolytes when he the scent in the air changed and he knew before he followed Colossus's line of sight that the man was thinking about what he had lost that could never be repaired. Shadowcat was a few yards away, standing with Rogue and Psylocke next to the just-disemboweled energy center of another cyborg production station. 

"Sun'll be comin' up soon," Wolverine muttered, looking around. Experience told him that distracting Piotr was the only way to go - telling him not to brood was generally a pointless activity. "Better make sure we're close to finished by then."

"If we gotta march back to the plane under a desert sun," Gambit began as he walked up to the other men and tapped his folded sunglasses for effect, "Gon' be an unhappy ride home." He made a noise indicating a foul smell, then cackled cheerfully.

"Smelled worse. Been worse," Wolverine said as the three began walking across the compound to the last undamaged station (Storm, Nightcrawler, and Beast having made up the third demolition team) in order to repeat the process. 

"Six o'clock and all is well," Archangel's voice came over the team's headsets. With no real purpose to serve on the ground as one of the teams dismantling the compound ("Not superhumanly strong, not in possession of energy-based powers, and you're not hapless enough with mechanics to be useful. It's a good think you're cute else we might've left you at home," Psylocke had said), he was flying high, slow circles and using his superior eyesight to watch for any visitors. "I'm going to the plane to pick up the charges."

"I do not think my unease will abate until we have taken leave of this place," Storm said as she held the flashlights over the removed generator so that the Beast could examine his nemesis, as he had taken to referring to it since he had nearly been electrocuted on the first attempt. 

"It's a trifle peculiar," the Beast agreed as he stood up. There was nothing to be gained in the near-darkness. They planned to take one of the generators home to play with and there was no point in wasting time at the moment. "But perhaps, as has been speculated, we are simple beneficiaries of a multitude of times and places and a decided lack of importance." 

"It is but shallow comfort," Nightcrawler mused as he looked around and saw that the first phase of their plan was almost complete. "That we are being given such an advantage at the cost of our friends' well-being. It would be worse, probably, if we were just sitting around, but even making our hay, as the expression goes, as our friends must struggle in a time and place inaccessible to us..."

"With a little luck, they'll all be sittin' at home drinkin' Wolverine's beer when we show up," Rogue said as she approached, Psylocke and Shadowcat in her wake. "Y'all ready for Part Two?"

If mutant powers were the key to getting past the initial security measures - the group had stopped sounding so skeptical of Shadowcat's suggestion once her solutions had proven immediately successful - then it was reasoned that the greatest damage could also be done with another staple in the X-Men's repertoire, blowing things up.

"Archangel will be here in two minutes," Psylocke announced after a telepathic query. 

Thirty minutes later, the charges were placed and the group was trudging through the dunes to a point they hoped would be out of shrapnel range. There hadn't been much room in the mini-jet for substantial weapon supplies to be brought along, but with the rough nature of the mission already known, Excalibur could provide a reasonably well-tailored manifest. Expecting building demolition, a modest amount of highly concentrated explosive had been brought along as well as remote detonators. 

"Here's hopin' that those double-wides are less indestructible on the inside than the outside," Rogue said as she waited for Shadowcat to set off the detonators. 

Storm and Gambit had directed the setting of the charges. As thieves, they had the best sense for interior architecture (the best way, therefore to maximize damage) and their mutant powers gave them a chemist's knowledge of flammability and explosiveness that helped, the group hoped, rig all of the opened cyborg production stations into prospective infernos. 

Now, as the sun was beginning to make its way over the horizon, it was time to put theory into practice. 

Storm waited until the explosion-generated sandstorm was almost upon them before summoning a breeze that would keep them untouched. When the greatest of the fires seemed to have died down, the group headed back to see the damage they had wrought. 

The smoke burned eyes, nose, and lungs as they drew closer and finally Storm summoned a shower to clear it away, opting to accept the end of the burning process in return for being able to work in comfort. 

"Well," Psylocke chuckled as she looked around at the nearly razed compound. "It's good to know that the X-Men haven't lost their touch. You can still always tell where we've been."

"Let's take a last look 'round and then get outta here," Wolverine grunted. "It's a long ride home and we still don't have any food."

"I'm sure we can pick up a shish-kebab on the way back," Shadowcat replied with a grin as she followed Rogue and Nightcrawler over to one of the steaming shells of what had once been the sand-colored buildings.

Without even as much as a grunt of effort, Rogue pushed over the husk and it fell with a screech of bending metal.

"Vas ist?" Nightcrawler asked in clear surprise, pointing down at something only the three of them could see. 

The others came running. Soon all ten were looking down at the smooth metal plate lying in the sand. It was easily one meter by two in diameter and there looked to be faint line running diagonally across it.

"Perhaps it's a basement," Colossus suggested. "For storage." 

"One way to find out," Shadowcat said with a shrug as she turned herself intangible and knelt in the sand at its edge. First she stuck her arm through, waving it around before withdrawing it. The same click of returning power from before sounded as she did so. She then ducked her head in, but came up quickly. "It's too dark. I think I see stairs, but..."

"Move over," Wolverine said as he extended his claws. 

Everyone took a few steps back and, walking in a crouch around the perimeter, he cut through the door with ease. It fell into the darkness, hit something, and then slid down what were now seen to be stairs. 

"Shall we?" Psylocke asked.

"I think we better take care of somethin' else first," Gambit said slowly from the rear. "Hey, Archangel, how'd you miss this on your fly-by?"

The group turned almost as one. 

"Oh, shit," Shadowcat whispered. 

***

http://www.geocities.com/nikimarzione/ 


	27. FP 27: Out of the Frying Pan

Future Pluperfect: Chapter 27 

* * *

Textual Poaching Alert: Marvel owns everyone but Mirrin, although Social Services would have stripped custody long ago...

* * *

"So this is how the rest of the world lives," Bobby Drake mused aloud. 

The two had settled down along the wall perpendicular to the one they had laid most of the team again. It gave them an unfortunately clear view of Cable's T-O virus running unchecked, but there was no other close place to sit. The sun was not quite overhead - Alex had figured it to be about two in the afternoon - and they had put themselves in the spot that would be the next to fall into shadow. 

"Huh?" Alex didn't bother to turn his head. Instead, he picked at the wrist of his uniform. He really, really hated long sleeves. 

"This whole heat sickness thing," Bobby continued, wiping his damp brow with the back of his forearm. "It's all new to me. Well, not completely new. It's just been a while since puberty and all. I know sweat glands change then and stuff, but still."

Alex looked at him like he had just proclaimed his undying love for Charo, but said nothing and then turned his head to face the others.   
  
It looked like a demented slumber party, Alex mused to himself as he watched the unmoving tableau before him. Jean leaning on Scott, Domino and Mirrin on either side of Sam... "Poor kid. Shame he's not awake to see this."

Bobby leaned forward to look past Alex at the tableau and then chuckled. "A Kodak moment, definitely. Question is whether he'd die of embarrassment or die of bliss."

"First one, then the other," Alex replied. "He'd bust a blood vessel somewhere in between."

Silence fell between them and Alex had just closed his eyes - not to sleep, but to take a moment away from the scene before him - when Bobby started making noises of discomfort. 

"I thought these things were supposed to keep us cool," Bobby groused. 

"They're insulated," Alex answered, not opening his eyes. 

"Well, that could mean keeping things cool as well as keeping things warm," Bobby protested. "Jean uses a thermos to keep her iced tea cold."

"It depends on what you put inside them, right?" Alex asked a little testily. "Hot things stay hot, cold things stay cold. Right now, you're overheated."

"You're looking kind of pinkish yourself there, bud," Bobby said slyly. "I didn't think Summerses sunburned."

"I'm not sunburning," Alex said a little crossly. "I'm just processing cosmic radiation a little differently than usual right now."

"You're sunburning," Bobby repeated sagely. 

"You're getting very close to leaving me the last conscious person here." Caught between wanting to sit still and think and knowing that he should be doing something towards making good an escape, Alex knew it was only a matter of time before he snapped at Bobby. 

"Well, now that someone's coming to, I'd hate to put them back under again," Bobby trailed off, pointing limply with one hand at Mirrin, who was beginning to stir. 

Alex hopped up to check on her, ignoring Bobby's snort of amusement and not caring whether he just thought it was eagerness for someone else to talk to or not. Not that Alex had, in hindsight, been that subtle and while Bobby was good at playing stupid, he really wasn't. He wasn't playing at being annoying as hell, but that was a different matter.

"Hey," he said gently, reaching for Mirrin's shoulder as she overcompensated for sitting upright and started to tilt the other way. "Apart from the obvious, are you all right?"

Mirrin muttered something in a language Alex knew he wasn't supposed to understand. Having shifted forward from her carefully chosen shaded spot, she blinked a few times before realizing that the only way out of the direct sunlight was either to tilt into Alex's shadow or drape herself across Sam (she opted for the former). 

"It's not the first time I've been on the wrong end of the psionic elastic band," she said with a note of bitterness.

Alex chuckled in spite of himself and her. "Maybe that's why you're the first one up."

Mirrin looked around. "That's not the only reason," she said sadly as she struggled to her feet, accepting Alex's hand to steady herself. "Although there's no real reason for Cyclops to still be out."

Feeling comfortable in his assumption that he'd given Alex the necessary moment to not only curtail his murderous impulses (Alex really was too easy to irritate) but also to attempt to charm Mirrin, Bobby came over to the pair. "We weren't sure what to do," he admitted. 

Mirrin walked slowly over to where the unconscious Cyclops was leaning against the wall and crouched down next to him. She clapped her hands loudly next to his ear and nearly fell backwards as he stirred and his reflexes put him into a defensive position. 

Bobby pursed his lips as Mirrin looked up at him with an arched eyebrow. "Well, I guess we coulda tried that," he admitted ruefully. 

Alex snickered and Bobby frowned at him. "Well, what stopped you from doing it?"

"What's going on?" Cyclops asked, cutting off the banter. He pushed himself up off the wall and stood up slowly. Taking off his visor, he looked around at his fallen teammates. He crouched back down to wipe a drop of blood that was slowly sliding down the side of Jean's cheek. Watching his wife for a moment, he then turned and looked up at Mirrin.

"Who is Dawnsilk and how do we stop her?"

"Once upon a time she was Clan Chosen," Mirrin answered calmly. "And we stop her either by giving her Dayspring or killing her."

"Why does that always seem to be the answer?" Iceman asked with a disgusted snort as he stood back so that Cyclops could move past him. "Well, we've come this far. It'd be a shame to waste all that effort just to turn him over now."

"It's all going to be a moot point if we don't do something for him," Cyclops replied, carefully eying their surroundings before returning his attention to the trio standing. "What did she do to him?" he asked, gesturing with his chin at his son.

Cable's arm was now barely recognizable. It had split into threads, tentacles almost, a little claw-like in some places and knife-like in others. His shoulder was enlarged, swollen and misshapen with spikes emerging and receding in no regular pattern. His face was still mostly untouched, except for the eye that was glowing a sickly yellow-green, and it was pinched in pain even as he was nowhere close to regaining consciousness. 

"Years ago, Tyler forced a neural link with Dawnsilk," Mirrin explained. "It was a trap, a means to hurt Nathan in the soul and not the body. Kill one or the other - execute his son or have him murder his clanmate. Nathan... found a third option. We thought the damage was restricted to 'Silk's speech and emotion centers, but now, if she's come to this... It doesn't matter. She is as Tyler was. Corrupted. We can't make the same mistake twice and be undone by wasted mercy."

"She formed a link with Cable and made you break it," Alex mused, mentally switching back into his 'Havok' mindset. "Did you do the same damage?"

"I don't know," Mirrin admitted, looking past Iceman to Cable. "I wasn't there when Tyler hurt 'Silk... I don't know how to explain things. I tried to do the opposite of what Dayspring said he did with Tyler. Without my telepathy, I can't tell how bad the damage is or if it's repairable."

"What about everyone else?" Iceman asked, starting and then stopping pacing. "Can we just shake them awake?"

"No," Mirrin replied, losing the vagueness in her expression. "Dawnsilk didn't just knock them out. She... unplugged them. They're comatose, not just unconscious. Easy enough to fix."

"Take heart in the little things, I guess," Iceman replied with a frown. "So now that there are four of us, do we want to work on a plan to get out?"

Cyclops seemed to be staring off into empty space as Iceman and Havok filled him and Mirrin in on everything that had gone on, including their little foray to the top of their pit prison, but he snapped back to attention as soon as Iceman finished talking. 

"We'll try the same thing again," he said after a moment. "Havok, you've got the most surefire means of eliminating the guards - I've only got the one concussive beam and we don't know if freezing them will work. Deep fry the soldiers and Mirrin, you'll take his back and get everyone conscious again. We can take out the inhibitor field and put Cable back together and then we'll work on getting out of here. Doable?"

"Will Dawnsilk be waiting for us at the top?" Havok asked even as he nodded. "She blew out all our mental shields before. We don't know if she's still doing it."

"One way to find out," Mirrin replied with a shrug as she adjusted her boot. "Stupid woman. She knows I carry this," she muttered, pulling out and then replacing the hilt of a small knife.

"You weren't the responsible one on Clan Chosen field trips, were you?" Iceman asked as he moved over to the spot below where he thought the safest exit point might be. 

"On a three-count," Cyclops told Iceman as he put his visor back on, taking one last look around at a fully colored world. 

They knelt on one knee. Iceman had Mirrin and Cyclops leaned back as if to verify his calculations of the necessary angle before cupping his hands so Havok could rest his foot in them. 

Whereas earlier Havok had only given Iceman enough of a lift to just peer over the edge without getting shot, this time the purpose was to get as far as could be gotten. Cyclops nodded to Iceman once. 

Three seconds later, Mirrin and Havok were flying over the edge of the pit. They dropped immediately into a tuck and rolled alongside each other until they could feel their respective mutations reactivate and the first plasma bolts screamed over them.

Havok's hands were glowing before he even stood up and he took a heartbeat to find his targets before he let loose. There were only four soldiers instead of six standing over the pit and aiming their weapons straight at him. 

"Mirrin, where are the others?" he called out to the woman standing behind him as he followed the trajectories of the weapons being fired at him back to their sources with his plasma blasts. The bolts being fired at him had no chance to connect as they were demolished by the greater waves he was producing and the soldiers themselves were simply seared in half. 

"Found them," she replied as a pair of plasma bolts hit the shield she was generating from her wrist weapons. 

Havok turned and fired again, taking out the other two - both guarding the path they had taken here, he noticed. Mirrin ducked and spun away from in front of him, taking aim and firing at one of the spikes in the ground that powered the inhibitor field. 

"The other one is over there," she said as Havok jogged over to her. Mirrin brought the heel of her boot down hard on the smoking remains of the tiny generator.

Havok was halfway around the pit before he realized that Mirrin hadn't pointed, but instead had just flashed the mental image in his head. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see movement down in the pit as the others were slowly coming to. 

Mirrin walked over to him after he had finished melting the generator. "Whatever Dawnsilk used to disable our mental shields, she's not doing it now."

"Can you teleport us out of here? Is that bubble still in place?"

Mirrin furrowed her brow for a moment and then shook her head. "No. The bubble is still there."

Havok was about to ask another question when he heard Phoenix gasp. 

"Mirrin?!"

They both moved to the lip of the pit. Havok kept his back to the others as he looked around for any approaching soldiers. 

"What _happened_ to him?" Phoenix asked in horrified wonder as she cupped Cable's chin in her hand. She had already beaten back the T-O virus to the point that Cable had a recognizable arm again, even if his brow was still creased in pain.  
  
Havok spared a look down at Mirrin as she narrowed her eyes, presumably looking at the psionic damage, then frowned. 

"Flonq," she muttered. She looked up at Havok. "Dawnsilk's psionic imprint is all over him. The damage is fixable, bad but fixable. But the neural link isn't broken."

"How do we - you - break it?"

"Kill her and hope he survives," Mirrin replied flatly.

***

"I think we better take care of somethin' else first," Gambit said slowly from the rear. "Hey, Archangel, how'd you miss this on your fly-by?"

The group turned almost as one.

"Oh, shit," Shadowcat whispered.

At least two-dozen Kurioon soldiers were drawing up into formation not a hundred meters away from where they were standing. With the sunrise already over and the light coming from fully behind the soldiers, it was a blinding, daunting sight.

"If I told you that they weren't there before," Archangel began as the X-Men spread out away from the hole, "Would you believe me?"

"It's either that or we need to fit you for glasses," Shadowcat replied. 

"Well, Storm," Psylocke said with surprising calm, "Whenever you've got a plan, do let us know."

"Why aren't they firing at us?" Nightcrawler asked curiously. 

"Because they have yet to fill out their ranks," Colossus replied. The tallest of the group, he could most easily see the rows of Kurioon soldiers growing. 

"Methinks we've destroyed the wrong part of the facility," the Beast said. 

"Well, just 'cause they're standin' there looking stupid," Rogue began, rising into the air a few feet. "Don't mean we have to. Let's do somethin'!"

"What, chère?" Gambit asked. "They ain't gonna go down like bowlin' pins."

"Nightcrawler," Storm called over her shoulder as a strong wind began to pick up. "Can you teleport away those who cannot fly? I fear that we are in no position to engage the enemy as we are."

He didn't even need to look around. "Nein. There are too many of us." The plane was already nearly at the maximum distance he could teleport himself, let alone the other six ground-bound team members.

Storm's wind blew from behind the X-Men and while they could feel the sand hitting their backs, the greatest force focused on the soldiers. The Kurioon troops were lined up in neat rows, guns across their chests, as sand swirled around their legs. 

"How much time do you think buryin' them is going to get us?" Wolverine asked as he watched the sand fly like snow in a blizzard. 

"Hopefully enough," Storm shouted back over the howling winds as she rose into the sky. Rain clouds were collecting over the soldiers and the sand that was now up to their waists was turning into muddy grit. "Start running!"

The group turned to flee, but barely got over the first large dune when a hailstorm of plasma bolts from behind them drove all of them except Rogue and Archangel face-first into the sand. The other two rose into the air, turning to face their attackers and Rogue took off in the direction the Kurioon were coming from before anyone could call her back.

"The original ones are still stuck," Archangel called down, "But the new ones are closing fast!"

"New ones?" Shadowcat asked in disgust as she stood back up. She was still phased and any blasts would pass right through her. 

"It makes sense," Colossus said as he rolled onto his side and let Psylocke up. She had been on the far end of their group as they ran and he had tackled her as the plasma bolts had started to rain down. Mindful of his weight, he had made sure she was not directly beneath him as they fell. "Where have all of the soldiers they have been making been hiding? We haven't killed them all."

"They buried them in a bunker in the desert," Psylocke spat as she rose quickly to her feet. "There are a bevy of bad mummy jokes that go with that."

"Let's go people," Wolverine growled. "Or else they're going to have to dig us up like mummies."

They began to run once more, this time mindful of the chase. 

Nightcrawler mixed running, leaping, and teleporting as he made his way over the sand. There weren't many times when he regretted going barefoot, but this was starting to be one of them. The sand wasn't that warm yet, but it was beginning to chafe the pads a little. 

But the discomfort in his toes was secondary, Nightcrawler muttered to himself as he teleported over a large dune, compared to the distinct lack of weapons at his disposal. They were all carrying the modified plasma rifles that had first been used in Brazil the other week, but Forge had warned them that they would soon be ineffective against the improving Kurioon stock and, even if they weren't, ten X-Men weren't going to bunker down and try to shoot at an approaching battalion of super-soldiers. 

Apart from the rifles, however, there was not much else on hand to be used than their own mutations. 

While it was true that there had been very little tonnage packed aboard the mini-jet because they were already carrying more people than there were seats, the truth of the matter was that there wasn't much they _could_ have packed. In addition to observing the tenets of non-violence put forth by Charles Xavier, Excalibur, as befitted the official super-hero team of a nation that did not arm its police, was not well stocked in terms of firepower. They had brought some of the explosive Moira had in storage, but that was all gone now. 

Storm drew up another wind to attempt to slow the soldiers down, but could see that it wasn't doing much and stopped rather than continue to alter the atmosphere. As she had learned during her youth as a 'goddess', Storm knew that deserts were deceptively complicated environments. Too much abuse would have great effects and while they were currently a great distance from even the smallest village (and here Storm sent up a prayer that the Kurioon had left it, wherever it was, in peace), any great effects would almost certainly include taking away what little rains would fall and replacing them with more scorching breezes. 

"Would raining on them help?" Archangel called over to her from nearby, shaking Storm out of her reverie.

"It would just make the sand easier to run on," she replied. "And they appear to be especially well-suited to the environment as it is."

"Cable and Mirrin spoke of acid rain and poisonous waters," Psylocke said into her headset. "It stands to reason that deserts are a more common occurrence."

"A pyrokinetic would be real useful just about now," Shadowcat grumbled as she ran near Psylocke. "Let's see them run on glass."

"Is it just me, or are those near-misses becoming progressively less near-miss and much closer to near-hits?" The Beast asked to nobody in particular as he slid down a dune and narrowly avoided landing on a suddenly appearing Nightcrawler. "With all of the sand in my fur, I feel like a stuffed toy left in a sandbox and not a dashing, debonair mutant-about-town."

"They're pourin' out of the ground like the Pied Piper was leading 'em out," Rogue called out as she flew up to the group. "Gotta be a hundred at least, probably more. And they're closin' fast."

"It's still another two klicks to the plane," Wolverine told Storm over his headset. "And I don't like our odds of gettin' the mini-jet off the ground untouched."

"Rogue," Gambit called over to her. "Go to the plane and grab the fuel tanks."

"What?" Rogue asked, swooping down low so that she didn't have to shout. "And how're we gonna get outta here? Only three of us fly and Ah can't carry everyone."

"If we don't do something," Gambit replied evenly, "You're not gonna have to carry _anyone._"

"I see where he's goin'," Wolverine said with a gruff nod. "Go, Rogue. We'll figure out what to do later."

Rogue flew off shaking her head. 

"You are going to make Shadowcat's pyrokinetic?" Colossus called over to Wolverine, his voice beginning to show the strain of his carrying a half-ton of organic steel through a sprint in the rapidly warming desert. "Why do I get the feeling that we are going to have to walk home?"

The group didn't stop running until Rogue returned carrying the two huge tanks. 

"Ah suppose we're usin' this as lighter fluid," she said from her hover. 

At Wolverine's nod, she handed one of the tanks to Colossus and ripped open a large hole in the other one she was carrying. A few minutes later, she returned empty handed and retrieved the second tank. 

"Archangel," Gambit called out, gesturing to the winged man once Storm announced that Rogue was on her way back and the soldiers were drawing closer. "Gonna need a lift," he said, producing a card. "Can't just drop a match on 'em from here."

Archangel obliged and scooped Gambit up underneath his arms. 

"Damn," Gambit hissed as they flew towards the encroaching army. "Closer than I thought." He fiddled with his headset. "Stormy, get everyone down. This backyard barbecue's gonna be a little too close to the house."

"Should we start from the rear, then?" Archangel asked in his ear. 

"Need to stop the ones closest to the team," Gambit replied, resisting the urge to shake his head. 

Archangel flew them towards the front of the fast-moving unit, changing his grip on his passenger to a more secure one. Under any other circumstance, it would be an uncomfortable intimacy for the two men, one the accuser and the other the accused. Warren fully realized that this was entirely his own fault and wondered what sort of misfiring synapse in his brain caused him to come to self-revelatory conclusions at the worst possible moment. 

Gambit pulled out a card and charged it. "Hold on to me," he murmured. If he had any idea of what was going on in the other man's mind, he gave no indication. "Paul Prud'homme is the only one who t'inks cookin' Cajun means burnin' to a crisp."

He flicked the card downward and gripped the arm that came around his torso as Archangel took off straight up into the sky. 

The noise wasn't as bad as Gambit thought it would be. Louder than when he had to restart the pilot light on the stove back at the mansion, but not as loud as the exploding plastique he had tossed earlier.

The hot wind came a second later and he noticed how Archangel spread his wings to ride the current, directing their flight rather than fighting it. It was graceful, far more so than any flight he had ever been on with Rogue. Perhaps it had to do with when and how they learned to fly, he mused. 

The wind died down as quickly as it had come and Archangel swooped them down through the smoke. 

"Well," Gambit said, trying not to cough on the thick, acrid smoke. "See anything? Take a moment now, don' want you makin' any mistakes like last time."

"It takes a confident man to poke fun at the only person standing between himself and a long fall into a twisted heap of char and metal," the Beast's voice came through their headset. "But do speak up, Warren. Was your Kurioon flambé a roasting success?"

A gentle breeze, obviously from Storm, cleared the air a little bit and the scene below became clear. The immolation had been successful and what had been an onrushing army was now a smoking, sprawl of twisted metal and dark blotches that were probably new-made glass.

"That would be a... yes," Archangel replied, sounding quite surprised.

"Bien," Gambit half-coughed. "Let's go back to the others, then. I like you, Archangel, but not dis much."

****

http://www.geocities.com/nikimarzione/ 


	28. FP 28

Future Pluperfect: Chapter 28 

* * *

Textual Poaching Alert: Marvel owns everyone but Mirrin, although Social Services would have stripped custody long ago...

* * *

"Aren't we short somebody?" Bobby Drake asked as he returned from his futile search for something that could serve as a container. He had no problems keeping everyone hydrated, but unless they found something everyone was going to be stuck sucking on ice cubes. 

"Mirrin's over there," Cyclops gestured with his chin. Bobby looked over. The group had come to rest in one of the small wooded areas that dotted the island and the Askani was kneeling on the ground at the edge of what would be considered a safe distance, her back to the group and her head obviously bowed. "I think she's meditating."

Bobby nodded - what could he say? - and went over to where Jean was crouched on the ground next to Cable's prone form. Nathan was propped awkwardly against the rock group Alex had been so intrigued by earlier, not quite reclining and not quite lying flat. Bobby handed her an ice chunk wrapped in a large leaf. "It's the best I could do," he explained with a shrug. 

"Thanks," Jean said quietly. 

It had been eerily quiet among the group ever since they had escaped - more so than simple safety demanded. But Bobby could easily sense that any attempt to draw the various members out of their separate solitudes would be unwelcome in the least and dangerous at the most. He had his doubts that Scott could adequately protect him from Domino. 

Once reunited with their powers, the X-Men had made getting out of their pit prison almost depressingly anticlimactic. At Cyclops' command, Cannonball had blasted out of the hole and into the sky to search for surrounding enemies and a simple ice platform had raised everyone else up to ground level. When Cannonball had given the all-clear, the octet had moved south - towards the other three islands and their point of origin - and come to rest here, in a spot well-hidden by brush, small trees, and an oddly shaped rock formation that Alex had burbled happily about before remembering the gravity of the situation. 

Right now, Domino and Cannonball were looking for some sort of food. Bobby had been impressed with how Scott had handled that pair by simultaneously recognizing their rights to be brittle and angry and concerned with Cable's precarious condition as well as appealing to their sense of team duty so that _something_ got done. Of all of them, Sam and Domino would best be able to distract themselves through work. 

And they did need food. They had meager rations, but there was no point in digging in to them if they didn't have to. While it seemed fairly obvious that their confrontation with Dawnsilk was as imminent as it was unavoidable, it was better to fight for the future on something more substantial than an energy bar that had been doubling as a shock absorber. 

Jean was dripping water into Cable's slack mouth, wiping his chin with a mother's delicate touch and brushing sweat-slicked hair off of his brow. Cyclops and Havok were trying to make themselves appear useful. Wood had been gathered and dumped into a small pit for a fire, although it had not yet been lit, and Cyclops was pacing back and forth between his brother still fiddling around with the eventual campfire and his wife and son and trying not to hover. Bobby didn't think he ever remembered Scott so restless during a mission and it reminded him, strangely, of the mental picture he had always carried of Scott getting ready for Madelyne's due date. Of course, Scott had been off fighting some enemy du jour when Nathan had been born, but that was by-the-by. 

Deciding that Alex would have definitely gotten over his annoyance at having to share the pit prison with him, Bobby opted to drop down to the ground next to him rather than try to deal with Scott. Up close, Alex had a rather depressed 'I feel so useless' look about him (one that Bobby knew well from his own personal repertoire) and poked at the dry twigs aimlessly while stealing glances at his brother, at Jean and Cable, and at Mirrin, who as far as Bobby could tell hadn't moved a millimeter. 

"Why don't you go check on her?" Bobby asked quietly. "Jean's fine and Scott's not in the mood to be coddled."

"And Mirrin is?" Alex asked with a snort even as he watched her unmoving form. 

"She's probably feeling like crap and were it me, I'd want someone to make sure I wasn't plotting ways to do myself in," Bobby offered with a nonchalant shrug. "Whatever Dawnsilk said to her, it hasn't rolled off her back like she's trying to pretend it did. And I don't think Nathan's current situation is helping."

"So you want me to be Daniel walking into the lion's den?" Alex asked suspiciously. 

"Nothing happened to Daniel," Bobby replied with a shrug. "And it's not like you don't want to."

Alex gave Bobby a look of severe displeasure, but Bobby only shrugged. 

"I'm serious about the checking-in thing," he said instead. "She's a telepath. She knows exactly what we all think of her and a little reinforcement that we don't blame her for what happened to Cable can't hurt."

Alex looked at him thoughtfully. 

"Go," Bobby urged. "I can give the twigs their last rites for you."

With a grunt, Alex hoisted himself off of the ground and walked past Scott, briefly clasping his older brother's shoulder in silent support as he passed, and dropped to the ground again near (but not right next to) Mirrin. He sat facing the group, not quite 180-degrees from Mirrin's position, but close enough. He said nothing to her and she didn't turn towards him. Didn't indicate she was aware of his presence at all, although Alex knew that as both a telepath and a trained soldier she knew damned well who was sitting next to her. 

Thickening his mental shields so as not to interrupt Mirrin's meditations, Alex took the liberty of watching her. Wisps of hair were poking out of her normally neatly pulled-back style and were starting to curl. It made her look even younger and softer, especially with her eyes closed tightly and... tears? Alex squinted so he wouldn't lean forward, but he was sure he saw tears running down her cheeks. 

Not wanting to be caught staring, Alex closed his eyes and breathed deeply. He'd wait. Sitting in silent support was as good as trying to carry on a conversation. Better, probably, as he wasn't interrupting and had no opportunity to ruin things with a banal comment. 

In the middle of the usual unsurprised surprise of Bobby handling a situation with subtlety and maturity - were Alex honest with himself he'd admit to being mildly jealous of Bobby's almost perfect social barometer - Alex was left to wonder why, exactly, he was where he was. Sitting next to Mirrin and feeling a lot more than he should for someone who still aroused fierce suspicion among almost every wearer of the X.

Mirrin scared the living daylights out of all of them - including Alex. More so than even Cable or Domino, both of whom the X-Men considered to be domesticated after a fashion, broken to the harness of acceptable social behavior. Mirrin made no attempt to turn her mission into something palatable and made no concession to the sensibilities of her new associates. And nobody seemed inclined to look past her warrior veneer to see if there was a person underneath. 

Along with Jean, he had been the one to do most of the talking with Mirrin during their early days at the mansion. Mirrin had a wistful curiosity about the time she was visiting, but hid it well under her mask of duty and Alex was sure he was one of the only ones to get a glimpse of her inner mischievousness. But while Alex was welcomed back with bemused familiarity, Mirrin only got distrustful glances and polite conversation and Alex had been reminded of some of the other reasons he had been happy to retire from superheroing. 

Alex wondered if he didn't have a different perspective on Mirrin because he hadn't met her on the battlefield. She had been unconscious, actually, and when sleeping on his bed she hadn't looked vicious or ruthless. She had looked young and worn and a little bit vulnerable. And no matter what she had done later, Alex had never forgotten that first impression.

He wasn't sure how long he was sitting there, but Alex heard Mirrin shifting next to him and opened his eyes to find her watching him curiously from a seated position. 

"Hey," he said gently. 

"Hey," she returned quietly, tucking a lock of escaped hair behind her ear. 

"Should I even ask?"

Mirrin shrugged and sighed. "I'll be all right as long as I don't dwell on it." 

Alex quirked his brow. "So you were meditating because..."

"Because I learned self-destructive behavior from the best of them," she replied with a rueful smile, turning her head all the way so she could see Cable and Jean out of the corner of her eye. 

Alex didn't follow her gaze, instead watching at her arched neck and noticing a long scar that seemed to run from her right collarbone to below her left ear. It was faint, but why hadn't he noticed it before? 

Mirrin seemed to realize that Alex wasn't looking at Cable and turned back to face him. 

"Well, I may be better looking and less socially inept than the other two, but I'm still a Summers," Alex offered jauntily, covering up his embarrassment at getting caught. "So if you need lessons on how to brood and blame yourself for everything, I'm your man."

"I know those lessons well enough," Mirrin replied, a slight smile taking the edge off the bitter tone. "But I appreciate the offer."

They were quiet for a moment and Alex nearly let himself get mesmerized by Bobby building a twig teepee. 

"She was as a sister to me," Mirrin finally said, and Alex snapped his attention back to her. "And her betrayal cuts away at a part of my heart that I thought would survive anything... but I'm not sure whether I'm angry at her or simply envious."

_Envious?_ "Did she tell you why?" Alex asked instead. 

"Second thoughts," Mirrin replied sadly. "I don't know if she ever really understood how things would be."

"What do you mean?"

"If Nathan left our time to come here-and-now to stop Apocalypse, then they must have known the consequences," she said, shaking her head slowly. "Even if he never explained it... If they knew enough to steal parts for a Tinex, then they had to know what happens when a nexus point is changed and when a timeline loses its anchor... It's as good as a sacrifice. He wouldn't have forced their aid, so they must have agreed. But now she doesn't want to hold to it..."

In Dallas, Alex had knowingly sacrificed his life to save the world. It had been a truly transcendental moment, even before they had gotten re-animated and dumped in the Australian bush. He had known the awful surety of being able to look around and see things with a clarity that only came when it was too late to appreciate it. It was a burning ache, an epiphany delayed too long. And even if his time in the outback and his amnesia in Genosha could steal away those glorious insights, they weren't gone completely. He remembered the taste, if not the ingredients. 

But even if he could have stopped Dallas - surely there would have been someone else there willing to take his place to save the planet -- and been able to go home in possession of that sweet knowledge... But Alex couldn't imagine sacrificing another person for his own life, let alone an entire world. Why would Dawnsilk... Mirrin had explained to them all about Dawnsilk's mental damage and they already knew about the horrors of life in the thirty-eighth century. Why would you choose that over a chance to grow up happy?

Alex gave a mental shrug and dropped the train of thought. It wasn't the first time he had failed to understand someone else's malevolent motivations. Life, unlike the detective novels he loved to read, didn't always come with a plausible explanation. Something was nagging at him, however. "_They_ had to know?"

Mirrin made eye contact with him then and Alex could see how much this - all of this - was weighing on her. That any of them could think that this was just another mission for her...

"They," Mirrin repeated with a nod. 

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Although you would have known all about the perils of time travel and could have told them all yourself even if Nathan hadn't... But that would be a 'we', not a 'they'."

"To Dawnsilk, I have been dead for decades," Mirrin admitted after a pause. She was almost apologetic. 

"I... I'm supposed to say something deep and profound now, I think, but I can't come up with anything," Alex confessed, reeling a little even though he had to admit to himself that he had suspected something like this from the start. Nathan had been so protective of her and he was never protective. "I mean, I suppose it makes perfect sense intellectually, but..."

"But it's still a heavy burden," Mirrin finished with a knowing nod. "I don't hand it to you lightly."

"It feels too weird to say thank you for trusting me," Alex replied, shaking his head. "But I do..."

"I know."

They were quiet again and Alex wasn't sure he was hoping Domino and Sam returned to interrupt the tableau or not. 

"Does Nathan..."

"Yes," Mirrin replied, looking over Alex's shoulder and staring at nothing. "He knows it well. And he thinks it's his fault and I need you to help convince him that it isn't."

"Not that I won't give it the old college try," Alex began almost lightly, trying to keep the conversation from tipping from the surreal over into the morose, "But I'm not exactly..."

"You are," Mirrin cut him off, switching her gaze from the trees to meet his. "You wouldn't lie to him simply to ease his pain." 

"He thinks you would?"

"Probably," Mirrin allowed with a shrug. "But more because he thinks to steal more guilt for himself than out of any belief that I'd hold back my opinions from him. I'm one of his victims, so I can't be telling the truth when I tell him it's not his fault. Despite evidence to the contrary, he does have a grudging appreciation of my honesty except where it interferes with his martyrdom complex."

Alex tried to swallow a laugh and ended up snorting a cough. "I think it really is a Summers trait - we all end up associating with women who tell us exactly what we don't want to hear."

Mirrin gave him a quick smile that did not travel up to her eyes. 

"Why does Dawnsilk hate you so much?" Alex asked cautiously, not wanting to risk this new rapport. "I can understand Nathan, but..."

"She called me a false friend," Mirrin replied hollowly. "That I was never truly Clan Chosen, merely an Askani operative in clan war paint... That nobody trusted me, not even Nathan. And then she showed me..." With a hitched sigh, she broke off.

"She was playing around with all of our heads," Alex protested, reaching out impulsively for Mirrin's hands and holding them in her lap. 

"Not this," Mirrin returned. "She was angry at me for not going back in time to save Aliya - Nathan's wife. Everyone was angry with me; the Clan lost many that day and I have not yet regained the trust of many of those who survived. But Nathan never let them question me about it. _He_ never questioned me about it. I always thought it was out of trust, but Dawnsilk showed me otherwise."

"Nathan thinks you had a different agenda?" Alex prompted gently. He knew the two didn't always see eye-to-eye, but like the others he had assumed it was merely a matter of different views on the same goal. 

Mirrin nodded and took a deep breath. There were fresh tears, but she made no move to reclaim her hands to wipe them away. "The last thing in his mind, before she took it over and tore it apart, was his wondering why I hadn't saved Aliya," she whispered and turned to look Alex straight in the face. "It haunted him. And I don't want his last thoughts of me to be hateful ones."

"They won't be," Alex assured her. "You've got six partners who are generally considered to be too damned stupid to give up until the job is done."

Beyond that, Alex wasn't sure what to say. It was obvious that the truth of whatever Mirrin had done - or not done - on that day (a day both far in the past and even further in the future) was crushing her. But if Nathan wasn't to know, how could he ask? Alex tried to come up with some situation in his own life that would at least give him some guidance and couldn't. It was with no pride whatsoever that he could say that his own personal history was nothing if not wrought with landmines, but nothing matched this in scope. So instead he just squeezed her hands a little tighter. 

"And while Nathan's damaged, I'm still unbreakable," Mirrin added joylessly, her eyes alight with the bitter irony. "At least here-and-now. I'm unstoppable. I'll fix things or I'll kill everyone trying. Because I have to."

"Because of your mission?"

"Because it's not my time to die. Not here-and-now."

Alex just blinked at her. He knew Nathan had something to that effect a few times earlier, but had assumed that was simply Nathan's confidence in Mirrin's abilities. And then a light bulb went on. 

"That's why you couldn't save Aliya, isn't it?" Alex asked hesitantly. "Whatever it is that's making you invincible here is what made her..."

"More or less," Mirrin agreed flatly, staring at their joined hands. Alex debated whether to withdraw his own, but then she broke free of his grasp and took his right hand into her own, holding it so the palm was flat. 

"You asked me once about temporal physics. Do you remember?" 

Alex nodded.

"Everyone and everything has one event that defines their existence according to the timestream. Their nexus point," she began, tapping the back of his hand with her fingertip. "What happens before and after doesn't matter as far as the timestream is concerned. If the nexus point is met, then the timestream can continue on. If it is not, then a new branch forms where it deviates. Uncountable possibilities." She ran her finger up to his wrist and down to his fingers to emphasize the different paths.

"The butterfly sneezing," Alex murmured as he stared at his hand and her fingertip resting on the tip of his thumb. "Aliya's nexus point was her death, wasn't it? That's why you couldn't go back to save her."

"Aliya was Askani. She understood," Mirrin said by way of agreement.

Alex figured that he must have looked confused because she went on. 

"The Askani Sisterhood was dedicated to assuring that every possible nexus point was met to guarantee one of the timestreams that would produce Nathan Dayspring," Mirrin explained with a sardonic smile, gripping his wrist gently. "And when that objective was met and Apocalypse was killed in my time, the next phase was to erase as much of Nur's damage as possible. And so they went about securing the timeline that would produce the man you call Cable."

Alex was amazed and appalled and not sure which emotion was prevalent. A chess match on a level he didn't think he could comprehend - more pawns than the Hellfire Club could even imagine. "As a staunch supporter of free will, I'm not sure I can even wrap my mind around this," he finally said. 

Mirrin laughed humorlessly and released Alex's hand. "There is no free will for the Askani. It exists only beyond the Sisterhood's grasp. And such a tenacious grip it is..."

"That's why you're all-but-immortal here," Alex began after a pause, looking down at his suddenly freed wrist. "Because your nexus point is in your own time... but that shouldn't preclude..."

"It has already happened," Mirrin finished for him. "The time path is stable enough that I can't undo it. Nobody can."

"Do you even know what it is?"

"Thankfully no," Mirrin replied with a relief that surprised Alex. "Everything in my life has been plotted out and I'd like to have one surprise left to me."

"Does it necessarily have to be a bad thing?" Alex asked hopefully. 

"No," Mirrin answered. "It could be a good thing. Or it could be a non-event. It could simply be me walking across the street in a certain city at a certain time and nothing happening to me while doing it. Just because I am important enough to be sent back through time to keep an eye on the Askani'son doesn't mean that my nexus point is anything great. But I do have to be there to do it."

"And there's nothing you can do here undo that," Alex said. 

"Short of killing the Tomorrow Walker himself? No."

"I guess he would be the mother of all nexus points," Alex agreed. "What happens when someone finally does kill him? If Nathan does it the day after you leave, will you suddenly go from being a soldier to being, I don't know, a farmer? Will you wake up in a different life?"

Mirrin shook her head and picked up Alex's hand again, tapping his palm with her index finger. "When a nexus point is destroyed, everything that comes after it stops. All of the possible futures where Apocalypse reigns, even for a moment, won't be possible anymore."

"But they'll still exist somewhere," Alex protested, pointing down at the hand Mirrin was still holding. "If I cut off my fingers, they don't disappear."

"No, they don't," she agreed, touching his fingertips. "But they can't live on unless they are re-attached."

Alex suddenly grabbed her hand. "You're fighting for your own suicide, aren't you? That's what Dawnsilk is fighting against. That's why you're not sure whether you want her to succeed or not. If anyone kills Apocalypse, then none of you will ever exist. Nathan is here and he won't vaporize, but..."

"I will do anything to make sure she doesn't succeed," Mirrin replied fiercely, pulling out of Alex's grip. "Anything. I will not allow _**anyone**_ to stop the assault on the Tomorrow Walker. What is one life, a thousand lives, a million lives against the horrors of the reign of Apocalypse? It is a polluted world filled with scarred souls."

"But Dawnsilk doesn't think you have the right to make that decision for her, does she?" Alex asked gently. It was a logical point and it wasn't - save yourself or save the world? But if killing Apocalypse would be sentencing millions more to die...

"Do you ever wonder why Nathan came back to _this_ time?" Mirrin asked instead as she viciously smoothed back more errant wisps of hair. "Why he didn't just go and kill the child En Sabah Nur and save the millenniums from his darkness?"

Alex looked at her thoughtfully. "I just assumed it was to come back to his own time, the one he was born in. To find Jean and Scott. Although in hindsight, I suppose he wasn't too eager to catch up with them..."

"This is the era that will cause the least damage," Mirrin explained. "The fewest losses of life and the greatest number of survivors in the timestream. Apocalypse isn't responsible for every birth and death from now until the thirty-eighth century. Most people will survive, more now than at any other point earlier or later. This is the best we can do."

"But it's not good enough for Dawnsilk because she's not one of them," Alex finished. "And neither are you."

Mirrin nodded. 

Alex took a deep breath and looked back at the group. Domino and Sam had returned and they and Bobby and Scott were crouched in front of whatever they had brought back with them. Nobody was paying him and Mirrin much mind, apparently. 

"I wonder if I could be that brave," Alex mused aloud, not looking at Mirrin. "I've offered my life in return for the safety of others, but it was always a snap decision. I've never had to work towards it, build my life around it. None of us have. I wonder if Nathan even has? He has to accept that dying may be necessary, but he has to think that he's going to win... I wonder if I could be that selfless."

"Selfless?" Mirrin asked with a mirthless laugh. "I am not selfless. I do what I do for myself. That I get to help someone try to save the world is only a... fringe benefit, I think you call it."

Alex turned and looked at her confusedly. "What are you getting out of sacrificing yourself?"

"Freedom," Mirrin replied simply. "There is not one part of my life that has not been chosen for me. Nathan isn't the only one the Askani cultivated to grow as they wished."

Alex cocked an eyebrow and waited for her to continue. 

"We are all implements to serve the time stream," She went on bitterly. "Our emotions and intellects are tools like our bodies and our powers, to be tempered and molded into precise instruments. They give us what _we_ want only so that we will react as _they_ want once it is taken away."

"Aliya?"

Mirrin nodded. "Aliya... Aliya knew what her part was. And Nathan couldn't know because that would defeat the purpose... I had to watch him grieve knowing it was a coaxed response, the intended reaction. Not only could I not save Aliya's life, but I also couldn't stop her death from destroying his. And now it's too late."

Alex exhaled loudly, unable to come up with anything to say that wouldn't be trite or meaningless. 

"I am a good Sister. As they made me. They needed me to a telepath and a teleporter, so they made sure my grandparents and great-grandparents met when they were supposed to and avoided the testing centers when they needed to so that I would be born a mutant among the flatscans. But they also needed me trained as a fighter, so they sent attacking hordes after my clan so I would learn anger and loss along with strategy.

"They needed me to be blindly loyal to Nathan, so they maneuvered my unit closer to where Redd and Slym Dayspring would be so that Nathan and I would first meet as children and not again until after he had met Aliya. Because I was to have his trust, but not his love... They have made sure that I would be everything I was supposed to be: a perfect instrument to urge Nathan towards his new destiny."

"How could anyone - especially Nathan - think you blindly loyal to the Askani?" Alex asked in wonderment. 

"They allow me my anger and my resentment as an indulgence because they know in the end I will do as they want," Mirrin said with a resigned sigh. "They let me the jester, the irreverent Sister, so I don't drown in my own bitterness. But they know their own work is good. I am as Nathan is, too honorable to let my own antipathy be the damnation of others. And he knows I will do as they need me to do because it is the best way for everyone else if not for me."

Alex watched as Mirrin seemed to just... deflate. As if the anger she held was the only thing keeping her up and now that it was spent, so was she. Already sitting Indian-style, she leaned forward slightly and let her frame slouch so that she could rest her elbows in the creases of her knees and put her face in her hands. 

It was an impulse to put his arms around her, but when Mirrin didn't stiffen in his embrace Alex reminded himself that he usually thought better when he didn't think at all and squeezed her gently. 

"I still think you're pretty damned brave," he murmured into her ear, which was now by his chin. He was facing the group and he noticed Scott was watching them. Alex didn't want to make any sort of gesture lest Mirrin realize they were being observed. But Scott simply nodded at him and began talking to Bobby, drawing attention in the opposite direction. 

Mirrin murmured something Alex was sure wasn't in English. "Was I supposed to hear that?"

"I don't think there is an equivalent expression here-and-now," Mirrin said quietly into his collarbone. "Literally, it means that 'I wish we had met when the air was sweet.'"

"I think I get it," Alex replied, pulling her a little closer. He was pleasantly surprised when Mirrin put her arm across his stomach and held on to his waist instead of simply using the ground for balance. 

Alex wasn't sure how long they had sat there - it had been early dusk when he had come over to her and it was dark now - but when they got up to rejoin the group for what would pass for dinner, he was relieved that nobody said a word. 

***

http://www.geocities.com/nikimarzione/ 


	29. FP 29

Future Pluperfect: Chapter 29 

* * *

Textual Poaching Alert: Marvel owns everyone but Mirrin, although Social Services would have stripped custody long ago...

* * *

"All right, Rogue, you can let go now," Kitty Pryde called down from where she was partially phased through the body of the mini jet. 

"Finally," Rogue sighed good-naturedly as she rolled her shoulders and returned to ground. "Ah thought you were takin' an especial long time with that one just for spite."

The group was in a generally good mood as they waited for the repairs to be finished. Food, water, shade, rest, and the lack of cyborgs trying to kill them could do wonders, Kurt Wagner mused to himself. Not to mention Storm offering up some localized showers to clean off the worst of the sweat, sand, blood, and grime. 

Earlier, it had been tense. Very tense. The stress had been almost tangible in the smoky aftermath of the jet fuel fire and while the acrid smoke had been cleared easily, it took much longer to discern that there was no more danger. And by that point tempers had been running short. 

In order to complete the safety sweep, the team had had to march around the circumference of the burn zone, a large crater still steaming from where the sand had turned to still-hot glass. Even beyond the bowl, dangerously hot metal shards littered the area and Kurt had been badly burned on the sole of his left foot by a partially hidden piece. The wound had immediately blistered outrageously and Rogue had scooped him up and flown him the rest of the way. [The unappealing alternative was to be carried like a sack of potatoes over the shoulder of either Colossus or the Beast and Kurt had figured that his dignity had suffered enough damage after squealing ("like a little girl," as Logan had gleefully reported to their rescuers) in shock upon contact.]

"Do you want to double-check my work, Cap?" Kitty called over to Brian Braddock, currently standing in the shade of one of the wings of the Midnight Runner. "Don't want to blow up the X-Men... well, not all of them."

Their destination had been the nest - they had to see if there were any more soldiers in hiding. There were none evident when they finally arrived, but a half-dozen soldiers (yellow-marked ones) had come marching up the steps of one of the underground bunkers shortly thereafter. For a group that had to rely completely on their own (in some cases depleted) powers, Kurt was proud to say that they had done well. 

Colossus, impervious to the plasma cannons the soldiers were armed with, had grabbed two on his own and bashed them into oblivion. Kurt was sure that Colossus's... raw display... had come with full knowledge that the soldiers were not human at all, despite deceiving appearances, but a part of him wondered if it would have made any difference. His friend had been on edge for so long... but no. And yet the previously simple reasoning - this was _Piotr_, after all - was no longer so simple. Nothing was with respects to him after the Wisdom Incident. Kurt mentally chastised himself for letting that doubt take seed in his mind. It was up to him to get past that else he had no grounds to urge Kitty and the others to do the same. 

The other four soldiers were then destroyed with a little less blunt force and, truth be told, a little more energy expended. Not as much energy, however, as was wasted in the subsequent argument over whether they should scout the underground bunkers before or after putting in a call for help to Scotland. 

_That_ had only ended when Kurt had erupted in true Bavarian dramatic fashion. Tired of the bickering and short-fused himself, he had demanded that, since he was of no use to anyone at the moment with one foot and very little left in the teleportation tank, Rogue fly him back to the mini jet so he could contact Muir Island while the others searched the complex. 

"Warren, my very good, good friend. My comrade-in-arms, fellow alumnus, partner, buddy..."

"No, Hank, I am going to finish this sandwich all by myself. Go steal from Kitty."

"Why me?!"

"Because the alternative is Wolverine's food and I don't want to _kill_ Hank, just keep him away from my dinner."

Kurt had been in a vile, black mood when he had called Excalibur. Dark enough so that Wisdom had put him through to Brian's lab rather than contribute his opinions on how they had come to be stranded in the middle of the desert. But it was hard to stay angry as Brian, in his usual dry fashion, asked polite questions that nonetheless managed to elicit ridiculous responses from Kurt simply because the truth was in and of itself ridiculous. And the look on Moira's face after had had repeated, for the third time, how Gambit and Archangel had torched the cyborg soldiers... It was with a clear heart that Kurt had radioed Storm to tell her that Brian had modified two of the spare tanks from the Midnight Runner and would be arriving with crew and fuel in a matter of hours. 

Storm had reported back that the open underground bunkers had all proven to be empty, but a thorough search of the compound wreckage had revealed one more possible hiding spot. She and Kurt had briefly debated either getting Colossus to open it up or Kitty to phase down to take a peek, but in the end had decided that it could wait until reinforcements arrived. 

It had been late morning when Kurt had contacted Scotland and it was late afternoon before the familiar outline of the Midnight Runner was spotted on the horizon. By that point, the others had returned to the mini-jet to get out of the sun, although Rogue and Archangel had taken turns flying back and forth between the compound and the plane to make sure nothing else had crawled out of the ground. 

"A pence for your thoughts, Kurt," Psylocke said gently as she sat down on the blanket next to him. They were under the body of the Midnight Runner, aft of the cockpit but fore of the ladder. 

"Just marveling at our latest adventure," Nightcrawler replied with a bemused smile. 

"The part that had Warren, Remy, and Rogue working together or the whole idea that we escaped generally unscathed at all?" 

"More the latter, I think, but the former bears consideration as well," Kurt replied thoughtfully. "If not outright thankfulness at the miracles the Lord does provide us."

Psylocke laughed, a sound Kurt always thought of favorably comparing to tinkling crystal. It was one of the few parts of Betsy that had stayed with her from the beginning and Kurt was thankful that neither the Siege Perilous nor the Crimson Dawn could take it away. 

"I'm almost afraid to speak of it aloud," Psylocke confided. "Lest I bring too much attention to it and destroy such a delicate peace."

Kurt nodded understandingly, almost visibly fighting off the urge to check his foot. It had been treated and dressed by Meggan, who had fussed over him in a way that Brian never let her do with him (his muttering could be heard in the background as she had wrapped his foot).

The afternoon had been spent in search of shade and, as such, there was a limited amount of space to be in and avoidance was impossible. Thankfully, it had also proven unnecessary. In the aftermath of the forced intimacy of working with each other, Warren and Remy had been neutral in their dealings. It wasn't perfect, but it was a vast improvement over the polite hostility Warren usually favored and Remy's aggressive nonchalance. And, as Hank had pointed out, it wasn't as if the two of them had been best friends before Antarctica. 

"Speaking of," Betsy broke the companionable silence. "Where are Remy and Rogue?"

Kurt looked around. It was Archangel's turn to fly surveillance, but Rogue was nowhere to be seen and the space by the tail section of the Midnight Runner that had been Gambit's hiding spot was empty. 

"Cajun's off gettin' a smoke," Wolverine answered as he sat down heavily next to Psylocke. "Hank chased him away from the planes, said he didn't wanna violate any more FAA regulations in one day if he could help it."

Kurt noticed the other man's lack of his usual grace. "The bruise is not still bothering you, is it?"

Wolverine had taken on one of the Kurioon soldiers claws-to-body-armor and while he had eventually won, it had been a longer battle than had perhaps been anticipated. Wolverine had limped back to the plane sporting a bruise from thigh to shoulder along one side and a gash in his midsection that had had Hank seriously wondering if he'd have to use the man's intestines to tie the rest of his organs in place. 

"Nah," Wolverine scoffed, tilting back to ease the strain on his midsection. "That's gone. Stomach's a little tight, still. But it'll pass."

"It always does," Psylocke agreed ruefully. 

"So," Wolverine began after a few moments spent watching Kitty, Hank, Brian, Meggan, and Piotr fiddle around inside and outside of the mini-jet. "Are we startin' a pool on whether Rogue's gone off to kiss Gambit or kill him?"

"I am for romance always," Kurt announced over Psylocke's abandoned protest. 

"Both of 'em are too damned stubborn," Wolverine grunted. 

"Which is precisely why they'll end up alternately apologizing to each other and flaying each other for the next few months," Psylocke replied. "Women's intuition."

"Or a cheatin' telepath," was the sly return. 

"I don't cheat," Psylocke sniffed. 

"Hells you don't," Archangel chimed in as landed gracefully near them. "You're the only telepath here and _someone_ was trying to use my eyes to find them."

"And someone else didn't let me," Psylocke answered ruefully. 

"For the record," Warren said as he turned to walk away. "They're a couple of dunes away. He's on one and she's on another watching him smoke."

With that, he angled one wing to shield himself from the sun and headed off. Eventually he found who he was looking for. Storm was at the comm. unit of the Midnight Runner, attempting to watch meteorological satellite reports on the plane's computer. 

"If you think it's safe," Archangel began, gesturing towards the map she had open on the desk, "Then we might as well go ahead. Nothing's been spotted for hours."

"It should be safe," Storm announced, standing up. "There have been no unusual disturbances reported."

She looked around at her notepad and the computer screen and laughed at the irony of it. "When I was young and a goddess, I cared nothing for the effects of my doings. I gave rain to the village that came to worship me and I neither knew nor cared whether the village a day's walk away starved because of an unexpected drought."

"Is there anyone living close enough to be affected by anything we've done today?" Archangel asked, genuinely curious. 

"I am perhaps overcautious at times," Storm admitted, smiling gently as she cleaned up the desk. "The delicate balance in a desert is much more so than in a more temperate region. It is a lesson I did not learn early enough and one which still causes me to take extra precautions now."

Archangel nodded. He had his own lessons belatedly learned. "Do you want to take care of the burn zone before we return to the compound, then?" 

"It will make our trip to and fro that much easier," Storm said by way of agreement as she led the way down the ladder and out into the bright sunshine. 

"Well," Kitty announced as she came up to the pair at the foot of the ladder. "The mini-jet is back online. Both Cap and the Beast have looked over my work and we're ready to give it a test-drive. Colossus suggested taxiing both planes over closer to the compound once you're done filling in the hole, but we weren't sure if that might not be too close for when you cover that over. These engines will work with sand in them, but there's no point in grinding up the gears if we can avoid it."

"I suppose it depends if we decide to take everyone with us to the compound," Storm replied, gesturing to the other two to follow her to where Nightcrawler, Psylocke, and Wolverine were sitting. "I am open to suggestions."

"I don't know how quickly Brian's and Meggan's powers will be affected by their displacement from Great Britain," Nightcrawler pointed out. "And it would be unfair to embroil them in our own messes. Of course they will help us should we require it, but there is no need to involve them otherwise."

"Those were my thoughts as well," Storm agreed, turning to look over her shoulder where Colossus and the Beast were engaged in a seemingly pleasant discussion with the pair. "And while I know that your teleportation powers have undoubtedly recuperated, it would perhaps be wiser for you to remain behind as well."

Kurt muttered something unpleasant in German, but nodded reluctantly. "Between the three of us, then, we can bring the planes to you, I suppose," he said. 

"Psylocke, if you would recall everyone so that we can get started?" Storm asked with a firm nod. 

Fifteen minutes later, the group was standing around in a loose circle discussing strategy. 

"All Ah'm sayin' is that we need somethin' a little more concrete than last time," Rogue said with exasperation, her hands up in a soothing gesture. "Ah'm not criticizin' the idea on principle. But if we're gonna collapse all the bunkers like old mine shafts, then we gotta have somethin' better as a fallback plan than hittin' up the planes for more fuel."

"Too bad we didn't bring the X-Force guy who makes earthquakes," Gambit murmured. "Solve all out problems in one boom."

"What was our estimate for the number of Kurioon soldiers that emerged from the three bunkers we've already examined?" The Beast asked thoughtfully. "Excluding the wayward six-pack that emerged after the guests of honor had already been introduced to the Pu-Pu Platter?"

"Couple hundred?" Rogue suggested with a shrug.

"Not unless some of them had no arm or legs," Archangel retorted with a smile. "Even considering what got destroyed beyond all recognition, we didn't find that many parts. Knock it down to maybe a hundred."

"Gambit, you were there as well," Storm prompted. "What was your estimate?"

"Closer to a hundred, peut-être a little less," Gambit replied, looking straight at Storm and not at the other two. 

"Which divided by three, the number of bunkers we found, puts us at around thirty-to-forty soldiers per bunker," The Beast concluded. 

"We're forgettin' something," Wolverine spoke up and the others fell silent. "These aren't soldiers. They're robots. They come with a remote control. And we haven't found that yet. Or the guy holdin' it."

"We're off to see the Wizard, the Wonderful Wizard of Oz," Psylocke sang out quietly to herself, then looked abashed when her brother pursed his lips and stared at her. "Sorry, didn't mean to do that out loud."

"It's a point, though," Meggan said, tilting her head thoughtfully. "These creatures aren't on their own."

"There is a chance they could be remotely operated," Colossus suggested. "We don't know if there are other nests elsewhere. A hundred troops here, the few dozen that we have encountered already in our past conflicts... is that all there is? We may find the bunker just as the others were. There may be no headquarters."

"Yeah," Shadowcat agreed, "There doesn't have to be any fancy reason why that last bunker didn't open up. It could be something as basic as a stuck door."

"Would that it were," Archangel sighed. "I still say my original suggestion is just as valid as any of the others."

"Your suggestion was no suggestion," the Beast retorted. 

"No, it was that we don't analyze the plan to death," Archangel corrected with a smirk. "For all we know, it could be a bunker filled with barrels of the goo they used in the cyborg tanks. We've got two working planes now and the Midnight Runner's got weapons. Worst case scenario is we run like hell..."

"Which was what we did last time to such great effect," Rogue contradicted.

"Nobody got hurt," Archangel replied evenly. "Why don't we just see what we have instead of planning for every eventuality?"

"I'm with Wings," Wolverine grunted. "Talkin' ain't gonna get us home any faster and it's gonna be dark soon."

"All right," Storm called out over the mumbling. "I am going to cover over the pit we created with the jet fuel. When I return, we shall head over to the compound and see what is behind our mysterious door."

Taking a page from Cable's playbook when it came to dealing with the X-Men, Storm fled the scene before anyone could argue with her command decision. She rose into the air and flew gracefully over to where the damage had been done. From the sky, the darkened glass-and-sand combination looked like a wound on the otherwise pale flesh of the desert, an effect heightened by the pinks and golds of the sun just beginning to creep towards the horizon. 

Careful to use low-to-the-ground air eddies, Storm filled in the chasm. The play of the sand over the glassy parts was captivating and she had to be careful not to get caught up in its beauty. It did not take long for the sand to be evened out over the ground and while it still had a cast of the unnatural about it - like the fake beaches of a movie set - there was nothing so erroneous that nature herself could not correct in a short time. 

Returning to the planes, Storm was met by a ready squad. In addition to the food and water that had already been consumed, the Midnight Runner had come stocked with easy-to-carry water bladders and each of the X-Men was given one along with a granola bar. "Not to wish you anything but the best luck," Meggan had said upon issuing the goods. "But just in case."

With the sun at their backs, the group marched towards the compound and everyone took it upon themselves to remark to Storm on her work when they were halfway over what had been the burn zone before Wolverine had said anything. 

Shadowcat volunteered to phase through the bunker door once it was reached, reasoning that if it happened to be a stuck door, there was no point in letting them out right away. She grabbed Colossus's flashlight and phased through to take a look before Storm could come up with a good reason why she should not. 

"Well," she said upon re-emerging. "There aren't three dozen cyborgs eagerly waiting for someone to jimmy open the door." 

"What is there?" Colossus asked, catching the flashlight tossed to him with (thankfully) no excessive force. 

"Another computer like the ones we saw in the buildings with the tanks," Shadowcat replied. "No barrels of goo, but something that does look like it could be a radio transponder." She took a step back and exited the circle of the team and walked to the other side of the bunker door. "It was right about... here," she announced, retracing her steps except on the surface. At her foot was the small unopenable box that had stood next to one of the buildings. 

"When we first got here," Shadowcat explained, tapping on the box's surface with one foot, "I couldn't figure out what this was. It wouldn't open, nothing scanned, and nothing made any noise."

"It's the antenna?" Psylocke asked. 

"I think so," Shadowcat agreed. "Wolverine may be right about the entire place being run by remote."

"Well, then let's go down there and do what we do best," Archangel said, clapping his hands together. "Make a mess."

"Colossus, if you would?" Storm asked. 

Colossus squatted down and felt for the edge of the door. Finding it, he stood up, taking the near edge of the door with him and then heaving the entire thing aside. 

Everyone went down the steps to examine the bunker before Psylocke, Archangel, Storm, Gambit, and Shadowcat came back up above ground. The bunker wasn't wide enough for everyone to be down there at once and doing damage. Colossus and Rogue appeared next, each carrying a piece of equipment. Rogue flew the processing unit of the computer directly back to the plane and Colossus put the radio transponder on the ground to be carried back on the return march. 

Wolverine and Beast emerged last, somewhat sooty and sweaty. "I'd say that was a fair bit of constructive mayhem," the Beast announced cheerfully as he pulled the top off of his water bladder. "That deserves a drink."

"I want a real one," Wolverine replied, nonetheless guzzling down his own supply. "Call the taxis, guys, we're ready to go home."

***

http://www.geocities.com/nikimarzione/ 


	30. FP 30

Future Pluperfect: Chapter 30 

* * *

Textual Poaching Alert: Marvel owns everyone but Mirrin, although Social Services would have stripped custody long ago...

* * *

By the time Domino gave up the pretense of sleeping, the fire had already been reduced to embers. She sat up quietly and looked around. 

Drake was on his back, hands folded on his stomach like the way they posed dead people, snoring gently. Alex was on his side with his head resting on his forearm, a little closer to Mirrin than he otherwise might have been if they didn't have some weird emotional thing going on between them, but not close enough to be considered within 'couples distance'. Mirrin herself was curled up in a ball with her back to Alex, a position Domino took to be one of trust (allowing Alex to watch her back) and wasn't sure what Alex himself thought of it. Not sure she cared, either, but it was something to distract herself with on this long night. 

Sam was next to her, asleep on his stomach with his arms as a pillow. Domino had never understood how he could be comfortable with his face so close to the dirt. The one time she had asked him about it he had given her some long explanation involving farms and siblings and God's earth and Domino had decided that you could take the boy out of Kentucky, but you couldn't take the Kentucky out of the boy and there were some things she wasn't meant to understand in this lifetime.

She was glad he was sleeping, though. He had been eerily quiet ever since they had woken up in that hole in the ground and Domino had been worried that Sam had seen Cable incapacitated one too many times in such a short duration. They hadn't said much to each other while they were out doing the Swiss Family Robinson thing earlier. What else was there to be said? Sam had seen Cable dead, then undead, then pissy enough make others rue the change, and now he was as good as dead. They had already run the spectrum of emotions and there was no point in reiterating how scared the other was because they _knew_ it already and saying it again wasn't going to make it any better. Wasn't going to make it hurt any less.

So instead Sam had stayed near Domino's side, not quite hovering but definitely hanging out more than he would have were this any other sort of situation. And Domino had let him because, quite frankly, she needed it.

One of the erroneous notions Domino was happy to let flourish was the idea that she needed no one. It wasn't true, but it was good PR and it kept the people in her circle that much safer because they were that much less likely to be used as pawns. 

In truth, she had very specific needs. Someone to be there for her on her terms - not demanding more than she could comfortably give, not drowning her in more than she wanted. Nathan understood those requirements perfectly, even if they were so subtly different from his own that their inevitable fights came down to forgetting that those differences existed. It was how the both of them survived the psi-link, a too-intimate connection between two people who preferred to think of themselves as islands in a sea.

Sam, in that too-mature way of his, understood. Understood them both and loved them both and whether it was in spite of or because of their quirks Domino wasn't going to ask because that would be examining the dental health of a gift horse and neither she nor Nate got enough of those to be picky. She used to worry about the damage they were doing the boy, but now, having accepted herself as an object lesson if she couldn't be a good example, Domino was more impressed by him than concerned. Heartened that if he was going to live forever, then at least he was in strong enough mental shape for the challenge to survive without being embittered. Because the one thing her luck had taught her over the years was that sometimes surviving wasn't the least painful option. 

Case in point being the one leaning against the rocks, neither his body nor his mind in his own possession. At least the body was in safe hands - Jean had been ferociously attentive to him all day, snarling at Cyclops when he had suggested taking a break. Right now, though, Jean had finally given in to the exhaustion of keeping two bodies in working order and was asleep with her head in Cyclops' lap. Cyclops, who was sitting up with his back ramrod straight, staring at the embers of the fire but Domino was sure he was aware of everything going on around him. 

"We can build up the fire if you want," Cyclops said quietly. "It's not like Dawnsilk doesn't know where to find us if she wants to."

Domino didn't especially feel like moving, but stood up anyway. Cyclops couldn't get up without disturbing Jean and that left her. And the air was getting cold. 

Surrounded by trees, getting enough dry twigs wasn't a hardship and Domino was back feeding the little pit in a matter of moments. Having built up the blaze again, she decided to reap the benefits and sat down as close to it as she could without freaking out Cyclops. 

"Jean and Mirrin think Dawnsilk's going to come after us on the astral plane again," he said once she had gotten settled. "We're at a much greater disadvantage that way. Especially if she can blow out our mental shields as easily as she did last time."

So that's what they were talking about, Domino thought to herself as she nodded to Cyclops. The two telepaths had obviously been having some sort of conversation earlier, but neither of them had said anything and it hadn't been obtrusive enough to demand sharing. 

"They were thinking of a kind of group telepathic link," Cyclops went on, "Something temporary, but enough to keep everyone together. It would give the rest of us better shields, I think, was the rationale. We'll have to talk about it in the morning."

"It's fine with me," Domino said and shrugged, frowning at Cyclops's thoughtful look. "I like my privacy, but not to the point of dying for it." And especially if the choice was between Mirrin and Dawnsilk poking around in her head.

"Didn't mean to imply such," Cyclops replied soothingly. "I was just thinking about mental bonds in general."

Domino wasn't in the mood to pick a fight, so she let the comment lie. Mental bonds. The psi-link that was currently blocked on her side because all she got through it now was a nauseating combination of Nate's pain and Dawnsilk's malevolence. It was a slow, permanent torture if Nathan was anywhere inside his own head and Domino knew that when he got better, she was going to have to pretend to him that she didn't feel it. Because the one emotion Nate guarded more closely than love was pain. Pain was precious to him, his unit of measurement the way everyone else worked on either affection or the gold standard. The people closest to Nathan were the ones who could cause him the most pain and to gain the keys to his soul was simply to see what hurt him deepest. 

Eventually, Domino suggested to Cyclops that he might as well doze off because she wasn't going back to sleep and could keep guard. He had simply nodded thanks and lifted his visor to the top of his head. With his eyes closed and his entire face exposed, Cyclops looked so... young. Domino resolutely closed off that train of thought, then mentally slapped herself for idly noticing that Cyclops and Nathan had the same eyebrows. Well, it's not as if they weren't related, moron. 

Freed to focus her thoughts inward even as she kept her senses tuned outward, Domino found herself unable to think of anything at all. It was a weird sort of meditation - not as weird as levitating upside down and mumbling Askani proverbs - but it worked for her. And so Domino found herself curiously refreshed by the time dawn broke and the others began to stir. 

***

"I feel like bait," Iceman groused as he plucked at the spare bits of grass within reach as he sat on the ground. 

The group had moved back to the beach where they had waited a few days previous for the arrival of Cable and Domino - where Mirrin and Cannonball had first found the boat in 'real' time. It was a relatively open place - they had a group of rocks at their back (the tides having erased all remains of their dugout and the day heat long ago having taken care of the igloo) and the trees started far enough away that they could not be used as a launching point for an attack. A quick test had also shown that whatever kind of psionic system had been set up for their capture, they were beyond it. Mirrin could teleport again.

Spread out on a trio of blankets, the group now sat and waited for the approach of Dawnsilk. In whatever form she took. 

"You _are_ bait," Mirrin told him as she arranged herself into a meditation pose a few feet away from him. 

"I think I liked you better when you were all mystical and mysterious," Iceman returned with a frown. 

"We'd still be bait," Cannonball pointed out. He stretched his long legs out in front of him and crossed them at the ankles and then leaned back to rest on his hands. 

"Yeah, but she'd only tell us afterwards."

"But we'd still know," Cannonball returned. 

"But it would unconfirmed knowledge, which is just being suspicious and paranoid, which is completely allowable when you're surrounded by two or more members of the Summers family and you're being chased by time-traveling forces of evil," Iceman reasoned. 

"Are you always like this?" Domino asked with a snarl that only Cannonball recognized as her really her trying to hide her own amusement.

"I'm going into sugar withdrawal," Iceman informed her blithely. 

"Mirrin, Jean, are you two ready?" Cyclops asked as he and Havok returned and joined the group on the ground. Nature's call had an entirely different meaning when actually out in nature and simple safety precautions meant they had to go in pairs. 

Jean looked up from where they had arranged Cable on the ground, his pack under his head for a pillow. She looked at Mirrin and then nodded, shifting around so that she faced the group as much as she faced the prone Cable. 

Cannonball sat up a little at the first buzz in his head. He had done this once before, back in X-Force when he and Cable had had to break into a research lab to free a pair of civilian mutants. It was an... eye-opening experience, which was precisely why he closed his eyes and waited. 

It felt like being encircled in electric current, a crackle and a hum too close to your ears, not quite as annoying as a mosquito but much more irritating than the buzz of a fluorescent light on the fritz. Sam knew that were he to open his eyes, he'd see the midnight blue of Mirrin's psionic energy and the flame colors of Jean's. 

All of a sudden, the buzz dropped down to a murmur, from roar to background noise. It was over, Sam knew, and he reasoned with himself that it would obviously take less time to set up with two experienced telepaths instead of just Cable, who may have the brute strength but did somewhat lack in delicacy of maneuvering. Not that he'd ever confess that to the man. Even as he desperately hoped he'd have the chance to avoid doing so.

"Wow."

Sam opened his eyes at Iceman's proclamation. 'Wow' really didn't cover it. Everyone looked like themselves, but a little different, a little... off. Vaguely he remembered Cable explaining that it was a combination of 'reality' and how you saw yourself. 

"This is what a telepath sees?" Alex asked in wonderment, turning his head as if to see everything all at once and then looking down at himself. "And why am I back in civilian clothes?"

"Because that is how you see yourself," Mirrin replied. "Concentrate on your uniform and it will reappear."

Alex screwed his face tightly with the effort until he transformed back into Havok. "Oh, no, I lost the headpiece years ago," he muttered and it disappeared. 

"Is that how you two see yourselves?" Iceman asked, gesturing with his chin at both Jean and Mirrin. "Gotta love the armor, Jean."

"It's our psionic images," Mirrin explained. "What you are seeing is sort of a superimposition of the astral plane on the real world. That is what most telepaths see."

"Always?"

"It's very hard not to," Jean admitted quietly. "Throw in the voices and you can imagine why almost every telepath started out in an institution."

"Alex?" Mirrin whispered to him and he shook the cobwebs out of his head, not even attempting to pretend he wasn't staring at her. She looked so different, physically and otherwise. Stunning, he thought. Idly, he noticed that the scar across her neck was gone. 

Mirrin arched her eyebrow (now over a tattooed eye) and put a finger to her lips as if asking for silence before tapping her temple with it. "Remember that we are linked for the time being."

"Am I thinking anything that's surprising to you?" he asked honestly. 

"Is this what the neural link looks like?" Cyclops asked before Mirrin could answer him. 

Everyone looked at Cable, who glowed a dull gold just as the other two telepaths had a psionic aura about them. There were bright orange chains all over him, and Cannonball couldn't help but think that Cable looked as if he were a Christmas tree trussed up for disposal after the holidays. 

"It's not what a neural link should look like," Mirrin replied, getting up from where she had been sitting next to Havok and walking over to Cable. "Just as this is not what Nathan should look like."

"Can we get those chains off of him?" Domino asked, gesturing with a finger. "Will that get Dawnsilk out of his head?"

"Yes to your second question, and I don't know to your first," Jean replied. "Min? What do you think?"

Domino watched closely as Mirrin crouched down to touch the link of chain closest to her, by Cable's right shoulder. She pulled back upon contact, hissing in obvious pain before reaching out again. This time, she touched Cable's shoulder with her right hand before touching the chain with her left. This time, she could stand to touch the chain enough to lift it an inch or so off of his chest. 

"Domino, come here please?" Mirrin asked in a curious voice. "Try to do as I did."

Domino got up and walked over, kneeling by Cable's midsection on the opposite side from Mirrin. "Do I have to be in contact with him?"

"I don't think so," Mirrin replied, gesturing down to where she still had one hand on his shoulder. "I think I've solved that problem."

Domino gave her a stare to indicate that she wasn't all that happy with being a guinea pig, but reached out to touch the chain nonetheless. There was no pain upon contact, so she got a better grip of it. "It's very light," she said with a little bit of wonder. "Very strong, but it doesn't weigh much."

She put the chain down. "So what did you do and will it be useful?"

"The chains are mostly Dawnsilk's energy, but partially Nathan's," Mirrin began. "That's why it burned when I touched them first - Dawnsilk certainly doesn't want me removing them and Nathan, with his mind so wrapped up by hers, doesn't really know what he wants."

"We have to get his cooperation?" Cyclops asked. 

"After a fashion," Mirrin agreed. 

"It's not going to be as easy as 'come with us or stay with Dawnsilk', is it?" Cannonball asked. He had moved to his knees by Cable's feet, eager to see what was going on. 

"No," Jean confirmed. "I can't even begin to explain it... It's like he's here, but he's not. Dawnsilk has power, but no control. She's overwhelming him, not outsmarting him. And there are parts of him that she can't reach."

"Which are?" Cyclops asked, a little more gruffly than he meant to. 

"His bonds," Mirrin answered. "Dawnsilk has no comprehension of telepathic bonds. That's how I was able to touch the chain the second time - I forced open the latent bond we have between us."

"A psi-link?" Domino asked, trying to decide if she felt hurt that Nathan might have more than one. 

"Nothing so strong," Mirrin assured. "Simply a rapport between two friends who are both telepaths. We know each other's mental addresses, you might say." 

Cannonball shifted closer. "How did forcing open the bond let you touch the chain?" 

"I'm not sure," Mirrin admitted. "My best guess is that on some level, it let Nathan know whether I was friend or foe."

"But if it were like that, wouldn't he have thrown Dawnsilk out of his head by now?" Iceman wondered aloud. "You said she wasn't outsmarting him. So couldn't he just..."

"He's in so much pain he can't think," Domino said before Mirrin could answer. "That's what it is, isn't it? All he wants right now is to stop the pain. Or at least keep it from getting worse. And if letting Dawnsilk stay in his head is what does it, then that's what it will be."

Mirrin nodded. 

"It's advanced torture technique," Domino explained to Cannonball, idly noticing that she'd fallen into her old Teacher mode. "He's not going to listen to us unless we can show him _up front_ that we can take the pain away."

"The bonds are painless," Jean spoke up. "That's what we'll have to use."

"And why Domino is going to have to do the hard work," Mirrin agreed, nodding slowly. 

"Me? You two are the telepaths," Domino objected. It wasn't that she didn't want to save Cable herself, but the whole idea of fighting a telepathic war... 

"You have the strongest bond," Jean said simply. "The rest of us can only support you."

"But what about the two of us?" Iceman asked, gesturing towards Havok. "Not having any bonds to him might have kept us conscious before, but it won't help us now."

"You two are going to have to watch everyone's backs," Mirrin replied, standing up and looking around. 

"Dawnsilk's coming?" Cyclops asked, also standing up. 

Mirrin nodded. "Fiddling with the chains is as good as sending up a flare."

"What should we do?" Jean looked up at the pair. 

"Get started," Mirrin replied resolutely. "I'll keep her distracted."

"Won't they need you to bond with Cable?" Iceman asked. "Shouldn't that job go to me and Havok?"

"My bond with him is already open," Mirrin replied, shaking her head. "And with all due respect, I think Dawnsilk would have more enjoyment with me as her opponent."

"That's her, isn't it?" Cannonball pointed at the trees where a faint dark orange glow could be seen. 

He watched as, instead of answering, Mirrin knelt on the ground behind Cable's head. She put her hands to his face with her fingertips by his jaw and the base of her palms at his temples. She leaned forward until she was only a few inches over his face and her now-loose hair partially obscured them both. He could hear her whispering to Cable in some rapid-fire dialect, sounding more like a confession than a prayer, before kissing his forehead and then putting her own forehead against his. She stayed like that until Dawnsilk called out. 

"There you are," she sneered. Dawnsilk looked as she had before, dressed in some sort of battle armor. Except this time she was carrying a spear with some sort of bulb before the pointed tip. "Creative. Making all of them see the astral plane. Creative. Even if it made you even easier to find." 

A dozen Orange soldiers were standing behind Dawnsilk.

Mirrin stood up and took a deep breath. "Work fast," she urged Jean and Domino before arranging the scarf of her clan costume to be less in the way. She lightly tapped Cable's arm with the toe of her sandal. "You had better make this worth it, Dayspring."

Cyclops was about to reach out to warn Mirrin to be careful when she suddenly disappeared, rematerializing several yards away so that she was between the group and Dawnsilk. 

"Well, 'Silk," Mirrin called out, "Let's not dither."

Dawnsilk laughed. "What are you going to do, Ay'el? Fight me? Has time travel made you stupid? You couldn't ever defeat me in hand-to-hand combat even with my old body. Now I have decades more experience and a younger, stronger body to put it into practice. Kicking you around isn't going to be much of a delaying tactic."

"I'll take my chances." 

"Why are they speaking in English?" Iceman called behind him. He and Havok were standing about four yards behind Mirrin and only about two from where Cannonball was kneeling. Dimly aware of the makeshift mental operating theatre behind them, they kept their concentration on the two women.

"They aren't," Jean replied, moving over to kneel at Cable's head as Mirrin had. "The default language of the astral plane - when telepaths speak to telepaths - is a sort of natural language that everyone can understand."

"Heh."

"Well, even if Dawnsilk's only half-lying, then we still had better get to work," Domino said, pushing up off her haunches back on to her knees. "What do I do and how do I do it?"

"Mirrin's started us off," Jean said. "Nathan's at least aware that there can be painless contact. You're blocking your link, aren't you?"

Domino nodded. 

"Open it up as wide as you can and just send happy thoughts at it."

"Happy thoughts?" Domino asked with an eyebrow arched expressively. 

"Whatever it is you do when you want Nathan to know you're in a good mood," Jean elaborated dismissively. "Your 'come hither' look. Your 'I want ice cream' mood. Whatever comes with no anger and no negative feelings attached."

"You're asking one half of the world's most dysfunctional relationship for something that comes with no negative feelings attached?" Domino asked just loud enough to be heard.

Havok was about to tell Iceman to behave when Dawnsilk's ugly laugh drew his attention away. 

"Do you even know how to use that?" Dawnsilk asked, pointing at a knife that Mirrin had drawn. Cannonball, watching from his knees by Cable's feet, recognized it as a smaller version of the ion blade Cable carried. "That's why I didn't take it away from you before. You're harmless without a gun, Ay'el. You fight like a coward, from a distance. Close quarters, you're only good on your knees. Or on your back. The Canaanite generals say both. Does your would-be suitor know how you used to whore yourself out?"

"Now he does," Mirrin replied dryly. 

"Stick and stones may break bones and all that stuff," Iceman said to Havok quietly. "But why are we just letting her take this?"

"Because it's exactly what she wants us to do," Havok replied. "It's a delaying tactic, remember? The longer you keep them talking, the better off you are. And considering Dawnsilk's got a dozen of those guys behind her and Mirrin's got a catatonic Cable behind us, I think Mirrin would prefer that we let her get called a lot more dirty names first."

Cannonball stood up and joined Havok and Iceman. "While they're hissing at each other, Ah think we could probably take out some of the soldiers," he said quietly, gesturing subtly with one hand at the dozen cyborgs standing motionless in a twisted sort of parade rest off to the side. "Especially since this is supposed to be her killin' time for us to do something."

Havok nodded. "If we sneak behind the rocks and take the long way around," he suggested, indicating which way only with a slight tilt of his head. "Then we'd be closer to the Kurioon horde."

"Won't that leave everyone else unprotected?" Iceman asked, looking behind him. Cyclops, Jean, and Domino were all kneeling around Cable's still form and were not paying attention to anything beyond that narrow focus. "Cannonball, you're going to be needed with Cable, so let Havok go. I'll stay back. I'm not sure what I can do, but I'll probably be able to deflect any stray fire, should it come down to that. Although I kinda suspect Mirrin and Dawnsilk are going to get a little more personal than that."

As if on cue, Mirrin spoke. 

"A curious choice of weapon, Dawnsilk," she said with what Sam thought was much too much amusement. "Considering your great antipathy of all things Askani, to carry a psimitar does seem a little... hypocritical? Out of courtesy, should I ask if you know which end to point at me?" 

So that's what the long spear was, Sam muttered to himself. A version of the same weapon Cable carried. Mirrin's bracelets were also some variation on it, but as far as he knew they were more for defense than offense. She could fire energy from them, he'd watched her do it, but she didn't unless there was nothing else at hand. 

"What is she doing?" Havok whispered harshly. "The whole point of a delaying tactic is to delay the shooting."

A muttered curse from Cyclops drew their attention back. 

"Try it again," Jean was telling him. 

Cyclops was holding Cable's left hand gently, as if it might break, even as his own body was hunched tensely. 

"Try something a little earlier," Jean suggested to him soothingly. "Further away from when we left. Like when the two of you went sliding down that muddy glen in Barrenhill."

"They're trying to barrage him with memories, Ah think," Sam said quietly as he felt Havok come closer to him. "Force him to remember happy things. It's weird... Ah can't even imagine Cable as a child. Let alone that Cyclops and Phoenix raised him..."

"Well, here's hoping Nathan can imagine that he was once a child," Havok replied ironically. "I don't think there's going to be much after that that's going to be any good towards what they're trying to do."

"Alright, now that they're back to hissing," Iceman whispered to the other two, "Let's go."

Sam followed Havok as the other man nodded at Iceman, who in turn took up the spot most directly in the line of sight between Dawnsilk and those kneeling by Cable. They walked slowly to where Cable was lying. Domino and Cyclops both had their hands on the chains and were trying to break them apart, but were obviously having no luck. Sam nodded once to Havok, then knelt down to join the others. 

The tide was in. But while Cable was in no danger of getting wet, Havok had to walk into the surf to go around the rocks. Taking long strides so as not to spend any more time in the mucky sand than necessary, he paused on the other side of the rocks and peered over the top at the soldiers. 

The far end of the rock formation was about ten yards from the closest soldier. If he lay on his side, Alex was sure that he could use the rocks as cover while he blasted as many as he could. The problem would be getting away if he didn't get them all the first time. Crawling back to where he was currently standing would have been the obvious answer except that would bring any return fire closer to where the others were with Cable. And it was too far a run to the trees from here. He'd just have to make damned sure he nailed them all at once. 

On the other side of the rocks, Sam moved closer to Domino "What can Ah do?" he asked Jean. 

"All we've figured out so far," she replied, pushing the hair out of her face, "is that the more we force our connections to him, the looser the chains get."

"Which would be fine if he was Houdini," Domino ground out, "But we can't break them no matter how loose they get."

"Can we unknot them?" Sam asked thoughtfully as he looked down at the mess of orange chains, some now laying a little slack across Cable's chest. "They're all connected to each other. It'd be like untangling a mummy, sorta."

"It might work," Cyclops mused, sounding as if he had been thinking of just that and waiting for someone else to think it was a good idea, "If we can at least free his neck and limbs, then maybe we can just slide it off."

Sam reached forward to touch one of the chains and had his hand grabbed by Domino. "Be careful," she warned. "Dawnsilk knows what we're doing. She's making the chains harder to touch."

He took a deep breath and nodded. "Should I try sayin' hello ta him first?"

"That would help," Jean agreed. 

"How will Ah know when he's heard me?"

"You'll feel it," Domino said ominously. 

Sam turned his focus inward and tried to envision a connection between him and Cable. He replayed his memories of whispered strategy sessions with one arm slung around his shoulders as they hunkered down avoiding being blown up; of Cable barking at him in training sessions when Sam hadn't done as well as Cable obviously thought he could; of his perverse, immense pleasure at finding out that _he_ was the reason Cable had come back to this time. But he felt nothing and let loose a disappointed moan. 

"Don't worry," he heard Domino tell him. "He's no less of a stubborn bastard now than he normally is. Just keep working at it. Focus on stuff that didn't happen on missions. That's what finally worked for me."

Sam nodded, eyes still closed, and racked his brain for other Cable Moments. Nathan Moments. The man, not the soldier. The one he had caught singing along with Rosemary Clooney and who had tried to convince him it was an Askani meditation. The one who had cornered him and demanded to watch "Airplane!" with him so that Sam could explain the jokes he wouldn't admit to Domino that he couldn't get. The one who had unplugged the coffee maker and taken it into his room, muttering all the while about ritual cleansing baths, after Teresa had dared to make hazelnut-flavored brew. The one who... Sam felt a lancing pain in his temple and opened his eyes in surprise. 

"I told you you'd feel it," Domino chuckled mirthlessly. 

"Anyone who will take some of his pain from him is a friend," Cyclops explained. "That's about as complicated as it gets."

Sam nodded and reached out for the chain. It was soft and delicate-feeling, but it wouldn't break, he could feel that. I'd take your pain, he told that dim connection with Cable. I'd take your pain because you took mine. And if I have to wait for you to be unconscious to help you, then so be it. It's not like you don't get yourself knocked out often enough. I'll repay you one of these days. Because the one thing I know is that I've got time. "You used to make me hurt all the time in training sessions," he murmured aloud. "You know what Ah can take better than Ah do." 

Domino watched and listened. With the psi-link open all the way and Nathan completely unable to keep anything on his end away from her, she was getting more than she wanted in the way of everyone else's thoughts. Nothing specific, just the general gist of things. The way she would normally be able to sense Nathan's reactions to what everyone was saying. _Don't you dare break his heart, Big Boy. Don't you dare._

"It's working," Cyclops said, the relief clear. 

Domino looked over and could see Jean using her telekinesis to stretch the band around Cable's neck. Jean lifted his head gently and tried to pass the chain over his head from behind. There wasn't enough slack, so Domino reached over and tried to shuffle the closer coils so that a little more might get freed up. "You and your big head, Nathan," she groused. 

"Phew," Jean finally said once the loose link had been dropped and Cyclops was re-arranging the slack so as to try to loosen other possible spots. "At least we don't have to worry about Dawnsilk strangling him anymore."

"That was a poss..."

The firing of plasma weapons drowned out the rest of whatever Domino was going to ask and a flash of light bright enough to be brilliant even with the sun high overhead drew their attention. Looking over, they could see the Kurioon detachment with their arms in ready position. Another volley of blasts aimed at the other end of the rock formation was met by a sizzling noise and a shimmer of gold. Havok, clearly confused, stood up with his hands glowing. He had obviously been their target and was at a loss as to why they hadn't connected. 

"It's a telekinetic shield," a standing Cyclops explained in a yell to his brother, then looked down at his wife. "Jean, is that you?"

"No," she replied in wonderment. "It's Nathan's signature."

"How could he have..." Iceman asked in surprise, trailing off and throwing up an ice shield as Dawnsilk aimed her psimitar in his direction. The sizzle and the lack of impact on the shield had Iceman staring back at Jean questioningly as he melted the ice. 

"It wasn't me," Jean replied. "It must have been Mirrin, somehow."

Havok clambered over the rocks by the rest of the group. "How'd she pull this off?"

Dawnsilk apparently didn't care and turned her fire on the only enemy on her own side of the TK shield. 

Mirrin deflected the blasts easily with her own defenses, but had greater difficulty with the added attack of the Kurioon soldiers and scampered about before teleporting away from a particularly heavy volley.

"Iceman, take care of them!" Cyclops ordered.

With the ocean a few yards to his right, Iceman had enough material to quickly encase the soldiers in a block of ice yards thick, adding to it as they started to break free until they were finally encased in enough to halt them. 

"It's not going to hold them forever," he called over his shoulder, "But maybe by that time we'll have figured out what else to do. I made it cold enough to damage their flesh, if not their circuitry."

"He's my toy, Ay'el," Dawnsilk hissed at Mirrin. "And I don't want to share."

Domino felt Nathan shudder through their bond a heartbeat before the orange chains tightened dangerously around his body. She could see the bands pinching his skin and was thankful that they had gotten the one off of his neck. Judging by the look on Jean's face, she was thinking the same thing. 

"What do we do now?" Domino asked, wincing as the pain poured down the open psi-link.

"Try to calm him down again," Jean replied, smoothing sweaty hair away from Cable's brow. "He's in there. If Mirrin can distract Dawnsilk enough, we might be able to get something back."

"We're not gonna get anywhere until Dawnsilk is dead," Cannonball said quietly. 

"We'll get somewhere," Jean snapped. "We may not get it done, but we'll get somewhere. I'll be damned if I'm going to sit around and do nothing until Dawnsilk is finished playing with him."

"But there's got to be something more we can do than sit here and bleed off his pain," Cyclops ground out. "We have to get around that shield somehow..."

"I wouldn't worry about Mirrin right now," Havok said ominously as he pushed off the rocks he was leaning against and moved to stand near Iceman.

"Domino, try focusing again, please?" Jean asked, visibly trying to reign in her emotions. "Let's see if we can't loosen this up before it does any more damage."

"The score is Dawnsilk two, Mirrin one," Iceman said as he saw Havok appear in his peripheral vision. "It's kind of like a warped episode of Maverick - a whole lot of taunting interrupted by shooting. I can't imagine that this is how they did things back in their time."

Mirrin was standing in a defensive posture, waiting as Dawnsilk watched. Having gotten used to seeing her in her 'real' battle armor, Alex found it odd to see Mirrin now in what were presumably ethic robes, their intricate patterns waving gently in the sea breeze in sharp contrast to the tension of her fighting stance. 

"You mean apart from how they used to fight for the same team," Alex replied, losing his footing for a moment in the sand and flailing his arms for balance.

"Yeah."

"I remember your death quite clearly," Dawnsilk said almost cheerily. No, definitely cheerily, Alex mentally corrected. 

An image appeared between the two women, a hulking man with a military-style uniform standing over a kneeling, battered woman. He pulled on the woman's long hair and Alex swallowed a shudder of revulsion as he saw Mirrin's face. Older, by how much he couldn't tell, and bruised. But the biggest difference was in the eyes, which were dull and lifeless. Waiting for death. 

"Jesus," Iceman muttered. 

"You didn't fight in the end," Dawnsilk went on, now sounding disappointed. "They broke you."

The man was gripping the future-Mirrin's hair with his left hand and in his right appeared a heavy axe. Alex wanted to close his eyes, wanted to pretend he didn't know what was coming next. But it seemed cowardly to avert his gaze. 

In front of him, Bobby muttered something unintelligible but obviously vulgar as the ax swung around and the man was left holding a bleeding, dripping head by its hair.

"And then finally they put you out of your misery," Dawnsilk finished her narration. "I got to watch."

Alex swallowed the bile that rose in his throat and cleansed his sight by staring straight at the sun, blinding him to everything but not taking away the gruesome memory.

"From what I've heard, so did a few thousand other people," Mirrin replied flatly. Her voice was cold and Alex couldn't help but wonder how much of that was pure bluffing. "It was a public execution. The Clan Chosen were among many invited guests."

Dawnsilk laughed bitterly. "Askani through and through, aren't you? They brainwash all of you into believing that death means nothing."

"More like death is unavoidable," Mirrin corrected, standing up straight and abandoning the defensive posture. "You know how this must end, Dawnsilk. You know you cannot kill me here. We just saw why."

"I don't believe in your Askani fables, Mirrin," Dawnsilk replied with a snort. "I don't believe in immutable paths and destinies to fulfill. I can kill you here. I can kill Nathan here. I can do both at once."

"Aaugh!!"

Everyone turned at Domino's wail. Alex could see her curled in on herself, holding her head and shaking. Cannonball had grabbed her and was holding her to his chest, rocking gently, his shoulder muffling her keening. Jean and Cyclops were grabbing frantically at the orange bands as Cable started to shake, even in his confinement, in the full throes of a serious seizure. 

"He's not breathing!" Jean cried. 

Alex and the others sprung unto action, helping Cyclops try to hold Cable's spasming body still as Jean forced his jaw open. A long trio of heartbeats until Cable made choking, rasping breaths on his own. They kept him rolled on his side and held their own breaths as they listened to his. Cable's lips were flecked with blood, the ground below his face spattered as well. He shuddered irregularly, awkwardly in his confinement, resembling nothing so much as a trapped snake.

Cannonball shifted awkwardly, trying not to dislodge the crumpled Domino from his embrace. He had his back to Alex, but it looked like he exchanged some sort of silent words with Jean, who nodded.

"I can kill him with a thought, Mirrin," Dawnsilk said calmly. "And through that, I hold the same power over you."

"You operate on the faulty premise that I will do anything to prevent Nathan's death," Mirrin replied equally calmly. 

"Won't you?" Curious more than snide. Alex wondered if Dawnsilk really understood the Askani directive that well at all. 

"He is not the only one who can fulfill his mission. If it's not him, it will be someone else." The sea breeze was tangling up Mirrin's scarf with her left (weapon-carrying) hand and she shifted to free herself.

"Don't try to be coy with me," Dawnsilk said witheringly. "You honestly expect me to believe that you don't care?"

"Of course I care," Mirrin hissed, pushing an errant curl behind her head. "But I won't betray what he believes in just to make myself feel better. It's a concept you're abundantly unfamiliar with." 

"You're not in a position to taunt."

"You've been sent on a fool's errand, 'Silk," Mirrin went on, suddenly gentle-voiced and sad, as if she was explaining the world to a child. "You can't possibly seal off every thread that leads to the eradication of the Tomorrow Walker. You can't even narrow things down until the odds are even a little in your favor. I don't know what they promised you, sister-of-my-sister, but they sold you an empty can of water. "

"Domino?" Alex heard his brother's voice whisper, but didn't turn around. "Are you well enough to help me out here? He's... getting harder to reach."

"And I should believe you for what reason?" Dawnsilk asked skeptically. 

"Because you are my clanmate. Because I know the timestream better than any of the Canaanites do. Because you - the real you - never would betray your clan like this and you know that both Nathan and I would do anything for you."

"Ah. See, that's where you lost me," Dawnsilk interrupted, gesturing with the psimitar. "Don't try to tell me what I know. I saw everything already. You and Nathan both failed me. Failed us. And if the only recompense I can get is to kill you both, then that's enough."

"Don't you dare die on me, Nathan Christopher Charles Summers," Jean half-growled, half-whispered. Alex turned around and could see her transferring Cable's head from the pack to her lap. "I didn't raise you to die on me. I won't lose you again."

When Alex turned back, he saw that Mirrin was also watching Cable. She caught glances with Alex for a heartbeat and there was so much in that look that he wished they had something more concrete between them that he could send some sort of support. 

"Don't make me do this, 'Silk," Mirrin half-pleaded, determination and desperation warring in her voice. 

"I always hated you, Ay'el," Dawnsilk said sadly, shaking her head. "Always. Even before you refused to overrule Nathan and let the Askani do something to fix my head. Even before you let Aliya die. Always, I hated you. So proud of yourself for deigning to spend your days among the flatscans. There was nothing stopping you from being with your own kind."

"Nothing except my unwillingness to see others suffer needlessly," Mirrin retorted. "But, again, we return to principles. I think we should respectfully agree to disagree there and just move on."

Alex noticed something out of the corner of his eye and wondered if Bobby had been replenishing the ice around the Kurioon soldiers constantly, or whether this fresh coat being added was the first one. The sun was overhead and beating down on them and simple physics answered his question.

"Indeed we should," Dawnsilk agreed with a nod and leveled the psimitar at Mirrin. The energy ball that came a heartbeat later was big enough and bright enough to force Alex to shield his eyes. 

"She's flickering," Iceman whispered in awe, but when Alex tried to look the psionic energy had just hit the TK shield and the bright gold flash was enough to make them both see spots. "I'd heard that she could do that, but..."

Alex blinked hard a few times and looked again, but by that point Mirrin was in solid state. 

Dawnsilk and Mirrin were only about a yard away from each other, moving in a slow circle with their weapons at the ready when Dawnsilk suddenly spun the psimitar like Gambit did his bo staff and connected solidly with the inside of Mirrin's left ankle. Mirrin yelped, either in pain or surprise, and fell heavily to the ground on her back, the knife falling just out of her grip. 

"Why didn't she teleport?" Iceman hissed. 

"Too surprised, maybe?" Alex replied, mystified himself. 

Mirrin stretched out with her left arm to reach behind her for the ion blade and that's when Dawnsilk struck again, driving the pointed end of the psimitar into Mirrin's belly and staking her to the ground.

"No!"

Alex beat his hands futilely against the TK shield as he watched Mirrin gasp desperately for air and then cough up mouthfuls of blood, her left hand scrabbled blindly for the knife only an inch or two out of reach. 

"I warned you, Mirrin," Dawnsilk said with an insincere mournfulness, "that you were no match for me." She knelt down to the right of the fallen woman, her right hand resting on the staff of the psimitar for balance and her left hand gently trailing along Mirrin's cheek as Mirrin continued to gasp desperately. Dawnsilk raised her blood-covered index finger to her own face, tracing a line across her cheekbone before dipping again and repeating the process on the other side. 

"She's painting fucking warpaint," Bobby hissed as they watched Dawnsilk draw an obviously ritual design on her face. 

Alex watched with a sense of detachment he couldn't quite muster up the energy to question. By all rights, he should be miserable. Furious. Heartbroken that he'd never gotten anything more than a knowing smile out the woman now coughing up her lifeblood. 

But this couldn't be happening. Mirrin told him it couldn't be happening... And then something clicked, somewhere between noticing that Mirrin hadn't given up reaching for the knife with one hand and was reaching for Dawnsilk's head with the other. 

"Jean?" Alex called frantically. "Jean? Can you push that knife a little closer to her?"

There was no answer and Alex spun around. Cyclops gestured towards Jean, who was hunched over Cable. "She's the only thing keeping him alive right now. She's moving his lungs and beating his heart."

And just as Mirrin wouldn't sacrifice her life to save Cable, we can't let Cable sacrifice his life, Alex reminded himself ruefully. But it's just an inch...

"G'journey," Dawnsilk said softly, taking her hand off the staff to touch Mirrin's forehead gently. 

Mirrin's right hand had a tenuous grasp of Dawnsilk's head by now and pulled it towards her. Dawnsilk was obviously letting her do it, eager to hear the dying woman's last words. 

"G'Journey," Mirrin croaked weakly. 

It happened almost too fast to see. In one heartbeat, the knife was almost within the reach of the fingertips of Mirrin's left hand, and the next it was buried in the base of Dawnsilk's skull. 

And then the world whited out.

***

http://www.geocities.com/nikimarzione/ 


	31. FP 31

Future Pluperfect: Chapter 31 

* * *

Textual Poaching Alert: Marvel owns everyone but Mirrin, although Social Services would have stripped custody long ago...

* * *

The first thing Alex registered was the sand underneath his hands and knees. He was on his hands and knees? Fighting back nausea and dizziness, he forced open his eyes. He was definitely on his hands and knees. Staring down at sand, with Bobby's foot within his peripheral vision. 

Alex tried to shake off his disorientation as he picked his head up. From the way he was positioned, he could tell that the telekinetic shield was still in place. Which should mean that both Mirrin and Nathan were still alive... Mirrin. 

He pushed back onto his haunches and squinted in the sunlight he didn't remember being so bright. She was lying in the same spot where she had been... staked by Dawnsilk, except there was no longer any stake. The psimitar was gone. Dawnsilk, however, wasn't. She was lying face down across Mirrin's breast, the hilt of the ion knife glinting from where it was lodged in the back of her skull. 

"Oh, Jesus," Bobby muttered next to him, obviously looking at the same thing. 

A groan from behind them drew their attention away. The others were as they had been before they had been... ripped from the astral plane? Sam was holding Domino, and Jean and Scott were holding Nathan's head and hand respectively. Everyone was back to looking like they had been before Mirrin and Jean had pulled their telepathic maneuver. Alex realized that he and Bobby had been the only ones standing at the time, so they were the ones who had taken the worst of it. At least apart from the two people currently lying unconscious... 

"Nathan?" Jean whispered hoarsely, hand delicately holding his cheek. "Nathan, are you awake?"

Domino slowly rose up from where she had been leaning into Sam's embrace and put her hand to her face, grimacing in some sort of pain. "Turn it down, Big Boy. I can hear you," she grumbled. "A telepath in fucking China can hear you."

To everyone's immediate relief, there was another groan and a twitch of a foot followed by a muttered syllable that must have meant something in some language because Jean started to laugh and cry at the same time, so hard that she started to cough and Scott dropped Nathan's hand in favor of trying to soothe his wife as she began to hiccup. 

All of a sudden, Alex felt the telekinetic shield behind him give way and he jumped to his feet, wobbling slightly as he ran to Mirrin. Bobby was right behind him and they got to the two women and stared. No longer dressed in her flowing robes, Mirrin was back to her surcoat and body armor... neither of which looked as blood-soaked as they should considering... There was, however, a bad wound on her temple, a deep gash that sliced through her eyebrow and onto her cheekbone much as the now-disappeared Askani tattoo had. 

As Alex stood unmoving, Bobby knelt down and pulled Dawnsilk off of Mirrin. The woman rolled heavily, like the dead do, and Bobby pulled her by the arms until she lay a few feet away. 

"There's no war paint," Bobby reported, surprised. He looked up and Alex, who shrugged and knelt down to check on Mirrin. Undoing the utility belt that held the surcoat in place, Alex made quick work of the stomach plate of the body armor. When a shadow blocked out the sun, he looked up to find Scott standing over him. 

"Do you have any idea why she doesn't have a huge hole in her middle right now?" Alex asked his brother as he pulled up the bottom of Mirrin's uniform shirt. The skin was not unmarred - Alex could see the souvenirs of at least two plasma gun charges as well as the start of a scar that ran farther up along her right ribs than he had pulled up her shirt - but none of the wounds looked recent.

"Not a clue," Scott replied simply. "She's lucky to be alive."

Alex shifted a little so that Bobby could put snow over Mirrin's still-freely-bleeding face wound. "Luck had absolutely nothing to do with it," he replied darkly. 

Any response Scott had was lost as he was forced to jump back. The cold of the snow seemed to have brought Mirrin around and she came to life with a cough that quickly turned into pained retching as she curled onto her side away from Alex and the now-standing Bobby. 

Alex watched her, unable to do anything more than brush escaped curls out of her face. She was gasping for air as if she still had the shaft of the psimitar driven into her belly, wracked by phantom wounds that her mind still thought real. When the retching had slowed to a stop, he ran his other hand down her arm. "You done?" he asked gently. Idly he noticed that Bobby and Scott had gone back to where Nathan was recovering. 

Mirrin nodded, still not opening her eyes. Alex gently pulled her back a few feet - more to remove her from where she had just emptied the contents of her stomach than out of any need for contact - and she didn't protest, letting him guide her into a half-kneeling position with her back to his chest. 

"You know, it's bad enough that we've got Cable running around doing stupid things he knows he shouldn't be doing," he growled into her ear. The frustration that had been building ever since he had realized what Mirrin had done by throwing up the telekinetic shield was finally boiling over. "But we didn't need you somehow inheriting his mutant ability to find the most self-destructive course of action for any given situation. We're supposed to work as a team. Just because you don't think you can die here doesn't mean you have to try as hard as you can to prove yourself wrong."

"It made the most sense," Mirrin protested weakly, a limp hand reaching up to wipe away the blood from her forehead that was dripping down into her eye. She hissed as she ended up rubbing sand particles into the wound and Alex pulled her wrist away from her face. "It was the safest for everyone."

"By what sort of screwed-up Askani logic?" he asked her with a disgusted snort as he used the hand he wasn't holding Mirrin's wrist with to shake the sand off of the edge of her surcoat and use it to first dab away the blood and then wipe the side of her mouth. "Not only were you risking your own life, but every else's as well - if you were wrong, we'd all be stranded here in this non-time."

"She would have killed anyone else," Mirrin explained softly. "More surely than anything I could have done by accident. With Nathan in her control, all she wanted to do was kill you and the others, then me, then release Nathan long enough for him to see what she had done before she killed him as well. It wouldn't have worked, but... she might have succeeded in part."

"She would have tried," Alex retorted, letting go of Mirrin's wrist as she gingerly re-arranged her legs so that they were no longer underneath her. His hand accidentally brushed against her still-exposed stomach and he felt her stiffen.

"Sorry," he murmured, letting the last of his anger drift away. The part of his brain that didn't shoot first and ask questions later reminded him that he was acting out of a much more personal reason than the safety of the team and that there were better times for this than right after an impaling that felt real enough. 

"I just have to convince my body that my mind is playing tricks on it," she said, seemingly content to let his anger dissolve unchallenged. Alex realized belatedly that this was probably far from the first time someone had taken issue with Mirrin's methods of operating. 

She leaned forward with a grunt to pull her shirt down and leaned back against him once it was fixed. It was a strange intimacy, Alex mused. One of those times when a near-death experience created a closeness... that just happened to be what he wanted. And then it was gone. 

"Well, one trick it's not playing is that gusher around your eye," Bobby announced as he dropped down to the sand at their side. "I brought bandages and stuff to clean it out. I knew there'd be an advantage to dragging one of those kits through everything we've been through in the past few days... How many days has it been, anyway? Are we when we started?"

"When we started doesn't exist anymore," Mirrin mumbled, then sucked in her breath sharply as Bobby used some more snow to clean out the wound. Alex offered his hand and she squeezed it hard as Bobby moved with brisk efficiency. 

"I'm not gonna want to think about this too hard, am I?" Bobby asked as he ripped open the medicated towelette and wiped out the wounds before picking up the Ziploc baggie of gauze and bandages. "Let's see if I can do this without taping your eye shut or taking off your eyebrow."

"Use the butterfly bandage and tape the gauze with the paper tape," Scott suggested from behind him. 

"Shouldn't you be welcoming your son back instead of bossing me around?" Bobby asked with mock irritation as he dropped the waterproof tape back into the baggie and pulled out the paper tape. 

"It's kind of an emotional moment and, well," Scott trailed off, trying not to sound hurt and failing. "Nathan and I can do our thing later. It's more important that Jean, Domino, and Sam are there now."

Bobby rolled his eyes but whether it was at Scott's words or at the strange relationship he had with his son, Alex wasn't sure. 

"He's okay, then?" he asked instead. 

"Groggy, in a lot of pain, and Jean had to yell at him to stop answering questions in whatever language he was using," Scott said with grim humor, waving his hand to indicate that this was par for the course with his son. Which it was. "But otherwise, yeah. It'll take him a little while to get back up to speed, but... compared to where he was a half-hour ago..."

"Speaking of getting up to speed," Bobby began as he handed the medical baggie to Scott. "Since I'm only going to make a mess of this, why don't Alex and I go deal with the Kurioon popsicles over there and you tape Mirrin back together?"

"I'll be fine," Mirrin offered, trying to use Alex for leverage to stand up. 

"Let me just close up that gash over your eye," Scott said, gesturing for her to kneel back down. "Alex, go help Bobby. The sooner we get done here, the sooner we can get home."

Alex got up, groaning after having spent so long a time on his knees, and tottered awkwardly after Bobby. It was only as he started charging up his hands that he realized how much ready energy he had stored up, a sure sign of his not-quite-passed frustration with Mirrin. 

"She's got you literally hot under the collar," Bobby remarked cheerfully as he started dissolving the ice casing surrounding the soldiers. 

"Stuff a sock in it, Frostbite."

Back by the rocks, Jean stood up as Domino seemed content to take over the struggle of keeping Nathan stationary. Despite barely being coordinated enough to bring the ice cubes Bobby had left for him to his mouth without missing, Nathan had wanted to get up and walk around. Sam had tried cajoling, but Domino had been rather refreshingly straightforward and Nathan was now sitting truculently against the rocks, nominally watching Scott and Mirrin make their way slowly back to them. Nominally in that Jean wasn't sure Nathan could see much of anything. His one 'normal' eye had a dilated pupil and Jean had never been sure how clear the vision in the other eye was even under the best of circumstances. 

Mirrin was holding on to Scott's arm, trying not to lean too heavily. Through her telepathic bond with Scott, Jean knew what had gone on while she had been occupied with keeping Nathan alive. She wasn't sure what to think of it. There had been such a strong element of calculation about it, yet while all of them - herself included - had knowingly thrown themselves in harm's way to save another... More and more, Jean realized that there was so very little of the happy girl she had known in the older version of Mirrin and she wondered if this was what Nathan had been like when he had first come back to this time - unable to put aside duty completely for any sort of duration, unwilling even. That Mirrin and Alex seemed to have reached some sort of understanding pleased Jean immensely in a weirdly maternal way. Although it didn't do much for her suspicion that her brother-in-law was completely incapable of starting a sane relationship.

"Oh, good," Scott said as they drew close. "You've managed to keep him off of his feet."

Jean smiled weakly. She felt terrible for Scott, although she was being careful about not letting any of that show in their bond. He and Nathan... It would have been nice if Scott could have simply hugged his son and expressed how unbelievably _relieved_ he was that Nathan was alive and well again. It would have been equally nice if Nathan could have been generous enough to allow that to happen without turning the situation into something awkward. But they didn't, Nathan out of some persistent fear of emotional attachment to his father and Scott out of fear of being rejected. So they had grunted and nodded at each other, suitably manly gestures that were just so completely insufficient that even Domino had groaned. 

"All right," Scott said, clearing his throat and almost visibly pushing himself back into Cyclops mode. "We're going to need to search this island to make sure there aren't any more soldiers hiding around anywhere."

"It won't matter," Mirrin said from where she had stationed herself next to Cable. She was standing up, literally unable to stomach sitting down, and was leaning against the rocks. "Without someone to control them, they're useless."

"Was Dawnsilk it?" Sam asked, standing up and dusting the sand off of his knees. He had never felt so awkward as when Domino and Jean had fussed over the newly conscious Cable. Cable's lover and his mother and Sam felt like he was intruding and had tried to back away until Domino had grabbed him by his utility belt and yanked him down, nearly tossing him on top of Cable (who was weak as a new-born colt and unable to fend him off) and telling him to tell Sam that he was all right. Which Cable had. 

"Could there have been someone else?" Domino added, shifting so as to loom a little larger in Cable's peripheral vision. Sure, he was being docile now, but she didn't want him getting any ideas about participating now that they were talking strategy. 

"Even if there is," Cyclops replied, "I still don't want any cyborgs wandering around here, even without a leash. This isn't even a populated island."

"There is no nest here," Mirrin replied, blinking rapidly to loosen the tape underneath her eye. "It was just a trap for us to fall into. I think we've encountered everything we're going to encounter."

"If you want, Ah can take a quick sweep around," Cannonball offered, gesturing up in the air. "Although Ah don't know that Ah've got such a great track record at spottin'... Bird Boy. We haven't found Bird Boy yet."

"Bird Boy?" Domino repeated, making a face. 

"That kid that turned into a condor, the one Mirrin and Ah had a run-in with back before we came back to... you weren't here when that happened," Cannonball finished, awkwardly scratching at the back of his head. 

"My best guess is that he is back in his human form and very confused," Mirrin replied, leaning down gingerly to take back her ion blade that somehow had ended up in Cable's clumsy hands and was being toying with by him. Cannonball had to swallow a laugh at Cable's disappointed reaction. "Dawnsilk was the only thing tying him to the Kurioon. Wherever he is, he'll be found by someone soon enough and it probably shouldn't be us. He is going to have very strange tales to tell."

"Well, keep an eye out for him just in case," Cyclops told Cannonball, who ran a few yards away before taking off so he didn't blow too much sand up in his wake. 

"I'm going to help the boys go bury their parts," Jean said, standing up and gesturing towards where Havok and Iceman were melting each cyborg into a shiny lump. 

"You have the energy for it?" Cyclops asked. "You've done a lot the last few days."

"It's all been delicate work," Jean replied, waving her hand vaguely. "I just want to smash something."

"Ooo-kay," Cyclops replied with a microscopic shrug as she passed him, patting his shoulder as she did. 

"And then there were four," Domino said dryly as she eyed Cable, who had closed his eyes and was grimacing. "How's the headache, Nate?"

"If I opened my eyes," he said weakly, but more clearly than he had been speaking. "I'm sure I could see straight. But that's a sorely overrated skill."

Mirrin dropped herself slowly to her knees. "Let me in, Nat'an," she ordered, touching his forehead with her fingertips. 

Cable grumbled something, but apparently did as he was told because a moment later, he sighed in great relief and said something that sounded like "Thank you" in one of the languages the two shared in common. 

Domino tried not to smile outwardly at the sight of the two putting their foreheads together and Nathan clumsily embracing Mirrin. 

"After we're done cleaning up," Mirrin was saying to Cyclops as Domino shook off her thoughts. "We can go back to real-time." 

"Do you need to be anywhere to do it?" Cyclops asked. "Do you even have the strength to do it considering what..."

"What _did_ happen?" Cable asked in a weaker version of that curious-but-demanding voice that Domino recognized. She swallowed a laugh. It was the one he used to use after one of the Pack would begin a report with 'Let me start off by saying that it worked out well in the end...' That brusque tone that was Nate being curious and not possessing enough diplomacy to be anything but forceful. You were in his inner circle when he stopped being concerned about how you might take things. And right now, considering all that had gone on in the last few days, Domino never thought she'd be so happy to hear so little tact. 

She was already on her knees, so it was not much to crawl over to where Nathan was sitting and drop down next to him. While the move was mostly strategic - he couldn't get up if she was sitting so close as to almost be on top of him - any concern she might have had about displaying such open affection was wiped away when he put his arm around her shoulder and pulled her close so that her head was by his chest and she could feel his heart beat. He was definitely concussed.

"I took advantage of the restriction of the timestream," Mirrin said, talking to the others more than to Nathan. "The same arrogance that led to the Canaanites being able to master the construction of the Tinex led to their downfall. They can only go as far as the timestream will let them and no farther and until they learn to work within those parameters, they will never succeed."

"That's how the Askani work, isn't it?" Cyclops asked thoughtfully. 

Mirrin nodded. 

"How do we know Dawnsilk was the one in charge? What if she was just a higher level of flunky?" Domino asked, shifting to sit up a little more within Cable's embrace. 

"Everyone's a flunky here," Cable explained, his voice weak but the thoughts behind it strong. "Everyone was disposable, even her."

"Earlier on, Nathan noticed some... uncanny coincidences with how the X-Men's strategies were being met - we were worried about telepathic spies," Mirrin reminded everyone. In the near distance, she could see the trio finishing up destroying the last of the soldiers. "While Dawnsilk was telepathic, her ability to so effectively counter our measures was due to her familiarity with Clan Chosen battle strategy. The Kurioon never fought like Canaanite soldiers. Dawnsilk was the only one making decisions."

A half-hour later, the group had re-assembled. Cannonball had reported back that he had seen nothing except a flock of very loud birds that seemed to resent his presence and Havok, Iceman, and Phoenix had adequately buried the remains of the Kurioon robots deep under the sand. Knowing when to call a fight over, Domino had allowed Cable to stumble to his feet and stagger a few yards back and forth. 

"Ready when you are," Cyclops told Mirrin as the group joined hands. 

"Let's go home," she replied. And the world shimmered. 

***

Remy yawned loudly and stretched his arms over his head, checking the clock as he moved. Another hour before someone came to relieve him. 

It seemed like an eternity ago that he had been chained to the monitor room chair while everyone else was off investigating the mysterious events that would eventually be identified as the Harvesters feeding. An eternity since he had wondered what sort of ominous task Mirrin - and he hadn't even known her name yet - could have had planned for him to repay her for plucking him out of Antarctica. An eternity since his greatest challenge was not showing any reaction any time Joseph and Rogue wandered through his path. Such concerns seemed so petty now. 

He checked the clock again, as if staring at the second hand moving around over the picture of R2-D2 and C3PO (or wondering how the Star Wars clock had survived every home disaster the mansion had known) would either better acclimate him to local time or at least make the hour pass more quickly. He had dozed on the flight home, but because of all of the time zone changes, he was still unsure of how many days his body thought it had been awake without adequate rest. 

Kitty, Piotr, and Kurt had flown back to Scotland with Meggan and Brian in the Midnight Runner and everyone else had crammed into the mini-jet and returned to Westchester, refusing Excalibur's offer to clean up, feed, and rest at Muir Island before continuing on. Any other time, a visit would have been welcome. But this time, everyone just wanted to go home. 

The flight had been subdued, more so than might normally have been expected considering the worst of the casualties had been Nightcrawler's foot. More than could be explained by simple tiredness. Logan, Ororo, and Hank had split piloting duties (the latter two, actually, as Wolverine had run co-pilot for the entire trip) and the rest had either slept or sat quietly. 

It was probably due to what they were coming home to, Remy thought to himself. An empty house. Betsy had checked the mini-jet's portable Cerebro unit, but there was no sign of the other team and that, more than anything else, had shut down the cheerful post-mission banter. 

The silence had continued after they had landed and began the usual post-mission tasks - everything from checking the messages to taking out the garbage. Ororo had announced that she was going to attend to monitor room duties, but Remy had told her to get some rest and let those who had done nothing on the ride home earn their keep. And so after his shower he had picked up one of the sandwiches Warren was making for everyone - the leftovers from the roast beef that had been dinner the night before they had left was on its last legs and the resulting sandwiches were huge - and a bottle of raspberry seltzer and an apple and returned to the basement. 

Five hours later, there was half a bottle of seltzer left and the minute hand was bisecting C3PO. 

"Ah never could sleep well in the daytime," Rogue said as she walked into the small room and sat down in the other chair. 

Remy started. He hadn't heard her approach - unthinkable considering his senses and her heavy gait - and wasn't sure whether he was more surprised by that or by her appearance at all. 

"'S why I took first shift," Remy said almost-casually, not thinking for a moment that Rogue would buy it. "Best way t' get back on schedule is to go to bed at a normal hour."

Back in another lifetime, before Antarctica, before Seattle, before Israel, before everything, Rogue used to be a regular visitor when he had drawn overnight monitor duty. She'd give some lame excuse about insomnia - even though they both knew that Rogue could fall asleep at will - and they'd spend the rest of the shift together talking about nothing and enjoying the comfortable silences. 

Remy always chose to look at those nights as quality time, Rogue staying up to be with him, rather than focusing on how they were safe times for her. There could be no expectations of her in a place neither built for comfort nor with any sense of privacy. Rogue could flirt and tease and never be expected to fulfill any of the offers she was making. There was no intimacy when you weren't sure whether your next interruption would come from someone barging in the door or the screen blinking on to show the face from someone at NORAD. 

"Knew you were bein' more than selfless," Rogue replied, then looked momentarily abashed as she realized how that could have been interpreted. 

Remy shrugged, the kind of casual shrug that meant that he took no offense. He suspected he's be doing that a lot for a while, at least with Rogue - brushing off accidental reminders and insults as nothing to be concerned about. Absolving Rogue of crimes both intentionally and unintentionally committed. That's how they worked. She was the one who was invulnerable and he was the one pretending not to get hurt. Because that's what he always did. 

Remy honestly didn't think anyone else understood their dynamic. He wasn't sure if Rogue herself understood it, this strange mix of mismatched neuroses and half-satisfied desires. 

Most of them thought it was a predator-prey setup, the thief of hearts toying with the untouchable woman. But Remy knew. He knew that Rogue needed to be coaxed out of her shell. He did it through teasing and innuendo, one part gentleman and one part scoundrel. Joseph tried to do it through terminal niceness, drawing upon Rogue's need to protect. And in the end, Remy was pretty sure which one of the two was going to be successful. It wasn't that he thought he'd win over Joseph, more that Joseph would eventually defeat himself. 

What Remy was sure that Joseph really didn't get was that underneath the paralyzing fear that ruled Rogue's world was a passionate, free-spirited woman who didn't want _nice_ - certainly not that limitless, benign geniality that Joseph offered. Rogue wanted to play with fire, even if she was so terrified of getting burned that she needed someone else to light the match. And Remy knew that he didn't have a single lock pick in his thieves' arsenal that could access that inner person, a woman who went by a name Rogue would never tell anyone and who Remy was sure could be the other half of his soul. If he could just get her to come out and play a little while. 

"Ah...," Rogue began, then trailed off into a sigh. Her shoulders slumped and she looked heartbreakingly defeated. "Ah don't know why Ah did some of the things Ah did, Remy. And Ah sure as hell don't know how Ah could have said some of the things Ah said..."

In the pre-Israel life, while he had flirted and insinuated, parried, and cajoled, Remy knew all along that it was patience and a thick skin that was going to have to get him through. The former for surviving Rogue's tentative steps - she was so scared, so scarred - and the latter for dealing with her... lack of social grace. Getting emotionally involved with Rogue was like slow dancing with a hippo - you were gonna get your toes squashed a few times. You'd think with all of those personalities running around in her head that Rogue would have picked up a few pointers from them, but she hadn't. Rogue dealt with the voices she heard by ignoring them, throwing out the baby with the bathwater just so she'd be free. 

That was probably the one thing about Rogue that still drove Remy up the wall in a not-good way: her refusal to look at her powers as anything other than a curse. Every other mutant he knew had found some sort of peace with their abilities - even Cyke. But Rogue wouldn't look for any bright side and thereby provided herself with her own damnation. He didn't necessarily wish that she'd be as in tune with her inner self as Storm was - now there was a woman Remy could fall for, if only he wasn't forever seeing in her the child he had first known - but until Rogue lost some of the self-loathing, she'd never win. 

"'S'alright, chère," he offered, daring to reach over with his half-gloved fingertip and lift up her chin. "It's over now."

"Is it?"

"Ouai," he replied, nodding. Yes, he was lying to the both of them. But it was a lie for a good reason. Remy knew that this wasn't over, that it might never be over and might hang like a dark cloud over their relationship from now until forever, but he had to do this. Let Rogue off the hook one more time. Because of that never-ending self-loathing of hers. 

Remy might hate himself for some of the things he had done in the past, but he knew there was more to himself than just a stupid kid who had gotten too far in over his head and then chosen the easy way out. Rogue, on the other hand, was convinced that there wasn't a part of herself that wasn't a weapon, that wasn't only capable of causing pain. So Remy had to hide his own just so she'd believe a little. A little lie for a little faith. 

"Jus' don't expect me to not still love you, okay? Be from a distance, keep outta yours and Joseph's hair."

"How..." Rogue sputtered and pulled away from him, the chair wheels nearly screeching. "How can you say that after what Ah did to you? After how Ah treated you?"

"Tol' you it was over," Remy replied with a shrug, leaning over to hit the button on the 'don't fall asleep on monitor duty' buzzer. "Can't hold anyone responsible for what happened in Antarctica. Nobody was in their right mind. Not you, not me, not anyone."

And besides, deep in his heart of hearts, Remy wasn't sure he deserved the salvation that came along as a happy side effect of being Mirrin's entry into the X-Men. He sure as hell didn't think he deserved to freeze to death in Antarctica, but to be welcomed back - no matter how initially grudgingly - seemed too much somehow. As the beneficiary of unearned grace, he had an obligation to share it.

Rogue just stared at him in amazement. At least he thought it was amazement. 

"Look, if you're feelin' that badly, jus' save up your guilt until the next time I do somethin' royally stupid, 'kay? 'S bound to happen."

She stood up, shaking her head slowly. "What did Ah do to end up with someone like you?" 

"Make that sound like a good thing, chère," he chided lightly, keying in the numbers from the latest data scan. 

"It is, Remy," Rogue breathed out as she touched his shoulder on the way out of the monitor room. "It is."

Forty-five minutes of thoughtful introspection later, a very groggy Psylocke poked her head through the monitor room doorway and said she'd be in to take over right after she got herself a cup of coffee. 

Ten minutes later, freed from his duties, Remy changed into something more appropriate and rummaged through the fridge before picking up his motorcycle helmet. He was running on fumes - the first stop would be someplace to grab food more satisfying than the disturbing array of instant meals stacked in the freezer - but didn't want to sleep. He hadn't been lying when he told Rogue that he was planning on staying up until a respectable bedtime hour, even if it was going to be an unusually early hour for him. 

Nearly tripped over Wolverine, who was sitting out on the front steps smoking a cigar. 

"Goin' out for a ride," Remy explained as he put on his gloves. It was a warm evening, but still. "See some scenery other than desert 'nd eat some food that never saw a tin-foil wrapper."

Wolverine shrugged, as far as one could while leaning back on one's elbows. "You're a free man," he said with casual indifference, the kind that reminded Remy that he wasn't on a leash as far as Logan was concerned. "Stop by Harry's on your way back, 'f you want."

"Peut-être," Remy replied as he juggled his helmet and headed off to the garage. 

He never got that far. He was closing in on Bridgeport, Connecticut when the light next to the speedometer that was the X-Men's emergency alarm started flashing. Remy hit the microphone switch and Psylocke's voice echoed in his helmet. 

"We have communication with the Blackbird, Gambit. They're on their way home with everyone. ETA is eight hours."

***

http://www.geocities.com/nikimarzione/ 


	32. FP 32

Future Pluperfect: Chapter 32 

* * *

Textual Poaching Alert: Marvel owns everyone but Mirrin, although Social Services would have stripped custody long ago...

* * *

Warren Worthington stood on the back porch and watched in awe. 

At first, he had been intrigued. And then he had figured it was just Bobby being Bobby and working out what must have been some pretty impressive stress in a fashion that suited him. But somewhere around watching one of his oldest friends play duck-pin bowling with icy replicas of the Seven Dwarfs as pins, he decided to intervene.

"Bobby?" 

"Warren!" Bobby called back cheerfully as a ball skimmed past Sleepy and decapitated Sneezy. "How goes it?"

Warren walked leisurely down the marble path that led from the porch into the beautifully landscaped backyard. The half-acre immediately around the house was lovingly designed, leaving the rest of the acreage to follow nature's course.

"It goes," he replied casually. Like a bird being trapped, a loopy Bobby was best approached carefully lest he fly off. "Having a good time?"

The next pass saw the ball split between Dopey and Happy, knocking over Grumpy in the process. "I'd be having a better time if I didn't have to resort to cheating at my own game," Bobby groused, melting down Bashful and Doc.

"Well," Warren began expressively, waving his hand. This wasn't the time to point out that Bobby had had to cheat at his own games for years. Bobby could play checkers against himself and lose. "You didn't exactly set it up on a smooth course, you know. The backyard isn't flat, let alone oiled."

"You're right," Bobby replied decisively, as if the onus of failure had been miraculously lifted by Warren's words. He beamed beatifically. "And if there is anything I have learned in the last week, it's that there are many things beyond my control."

"Pretend I haven't known you since your voice was breaking," Warren replied, looking around for someplace to lean against. Sitting down was out of the question - these were Kenneth Cole slacks and he wasn't about to get grass stains on them. "And tell me whether I am supposed to ignore the deeper implications of that statement."

Bobby tilted his head thoughtfully before replying. "I think I'd rather you ignored it," he said casually as he moved towards the porch. "But I suspect I'd be better off if you didn't."

Warren appreciated being given the choice. Even if it wasn't a choice. He sat down on the wide marble railing, his feathers ruffling behind him as he settled in. "I'm gathering the debrief didn't even begin to cover it."

It had been an informal gathering that only qualified as a debriefing because it had taken place in the War Room. And that had only happened because it was the closest space to both the hangar and the med lab that could fit everyone all at once. Dirty, tired, and drained of far more than mere energy, Cyclops, Phoenix, Cannonball, Havok, Iceman, Domino, and Mirrin (Cable having been dumped unceremoniously in the med lab and been in a bad enough way to not protest too fiercely) had given a rough account of their adventure. It had alternated between the vague and the graphic, the narrative coming in fits and spurts that were sometimes fluid and sometimes unbearably awkward. Time travel, mind control, telepathic trickery that Warren and the others couldn't even begin to imagine... And Bobby had been either witness to or victim of all of it. 

"I can't figure out why I can't figure it out," Bobby began, hopping up to sit on the ledge next to Warren and falling immediately into a deep slouch. "It's not like I should suddenly start having problems with all of the logical leaps that take place in our line of work. Not _now_, after everything. But I don't know why this isn't rolling off my back."

"It's a lot to simply shrug and move on from," Warren pointed out. A blue jay landed on the grass a few yards away. It watched Warren curiously, the way birds tended to do, and he frowned at it. Tourist. 

"I think that's it," Bobby said, also watching the bird watch Warren. "I think that's what's bothering me. They're just... _dealing with it_. Cable and Mirrin. They were betrayed and they were confronted with proof of their own failure... And they're just..."

"They're not like us," Warren replied, finally ruffling his feathers as the bird flew off. "They can try, but in the end, they're not like us. They're too damaged. It's what makes them such fearsome soldiers - there's a part of them that either got lost or got too broken or just got evolved out of them and they can't... I wonder if when Cable gets all pissed at us for being soft, he's really just jealous. He can't be soft; it's not that he doesn't want to be."

"And they know what's wrong," Bobby continued, slumping down even further and letting his elbows dig into his thighs. "They know what they're missing out on. What they've lost... Like Alice through the looking glass... I don't want to be like that, Warren. I don't want to see myself executed and not miss a beat. I don't even want to be able to bluff convincingly that I'm not affected. I don't want to find out that the Dream failed and one of us got so bitter as to turn..."

"You already did," Warren pointed out quietly. "I killed you... at least I meant to. When I was Death... And we've all turned at one point or another. Most of us, at any rate. Me, Jean, Logan, Hank, Alex, even Charles." He ticked off the names on his fingers.

"But we're the X-Men and we get better," Bobby replied, looking surprised at his own bitterness. "And even then, none of us turned willingly. Jean and Hank weren't Jean and Hank. You and Alex and Logan had your heads messed with... Charles got taken over. None of us ever said 'you know, I've had enough of the ingratitude, the blame, the Sentinels always going after us first, all of it. I'm going over to the other side.' Not even you did that. To look over your life with a clear head and say 'to hell with all this'. Dawnsilk _did_.

"And I can't even imagine what kind of situation that must have been for her to do it. Because to survive that long in those circumstances... she had to be a helluva lot stronger than I ever could be. And she broke in the end. They all broke in the end..." He shuddered. 

"We bend," Warren said after a pause. "We bend where they don't. That's what makes us who we are, what makes us strong in our own way. We don't stand there and take it until we explode. Our greatest strength is that we recognize our own weakness. Even Scott walked away after Jean died - at least who we thought was Jean. We leave the X-Men and we come back when we're ready or when we're needed."

"But that's because we can," Bobby protested, hopping down off the railing and standing up before Warren. 

"And that's not our fault," Warren returned gently. With Bobby looking up at him like that, he felt like it was years ago and it was the teenaged Bobby watching him with saucer-big eyes. "We can't be blamed for living in our own time." 

He hopped down off the railing as well and put his hand on Bobby's shoulder to indicate that they should head back towards the house.

"Right now," Warren continued as they walked up the porch steps, "We have the luxury of being able to take a time-out. But if something changed and that option was taken away... we'd manage. Look at Alex - our most reluctant X-Man. If he can do it... That's where Cable's got it wrong. He doesn't think we'd be able to hack it if things got too rough because we don't go balls-to-the-wall now. But he's wrong."

"I wish I could detach myself from things and look at them objectively," Bobby sighed. "I wish I could sound so calm."

"You missed my panic attack right after you left," Warren confided with a laugh. "I was all but ready to run the white flag up the flagpole and negotiate the terms of our surrender."

"What happened?" Bobby asked as he stopped walking right inside the back door. 

"You sang 'Oh, Susannah' into the Blackbird radio," Warren replied with a self-effacing grin. That had been the initial transmission from the plane - Bobby's off-key rendition of the old song, complete with a Long Island-tinted Southern drawl that had had Rogue whimpering in between snorts of laughter. 

"But..."

"You guys came back," Warren cut him off. "And it doesn't matter how and it doesn't matter who helped out. Because if the X-Men have a knack for anything other than coming back from the dead, it's finding just the right help when they need it. And that's when it hit me. If we can pull this off, then we're okay. The Kurioon proved the same thing that the Shadow King did and the Phalanx did and Onslaught... Betsy was right. She was right all along when she said that we have yet to truly meet our match."

Bobby looked at him thoughtfully. "Then I suppose I should thank her instead of you?" he asked with a crooked grin as he opened up the French doors. 

"You could," Warren allowed as he motioned for Bobby to go before him. "But that would further crush my not insubstantial ego, which has already taken a beating in the last day or two."

"You could use it," Bobby replied lightly as they moved through the back foyer. He had heard about Warren's unspoken rapprochement with Remy from Hank, who had sounded quite pleased. 

"Be nice or I tell Sam what you did to the Dwarfs," Warren warned, taking the change of tone and topic for what it was. "And you know how he'd take the news of you defiling Snow White's buddies."

"Sam's a big boy," Bobby pointed out, sounding less flippant about it than he had in times past. 

"Sam's also worn out the videotape Jean got him for Christmas last year," Warren returned. "And he's bigger than you are."

"But I'm cuter."

"No you're not."

"Aren't I, Rogue?" Bobby appealed to the woman crossing the hall in front of him. 

"No you're not," Rogue called over her shoulder as she closed the bathroom door. 

"You don't even know what you're disagreeing with me about!" Bobby protested as Warren walked on, chuckling. 

***

Scott ignored his son's groan as he entered the med-lab. It wasn't his 'go away or I'll inflict great bodily harm on you' groan or any of its variations. It was the 'I know you're not going away no matter what I do, but I'm still going to register my displeasure that you think we need to talk' groan. And that Scott could live with. 

Mild dehydration and the effects of not having eaten a full meal in more than a week, combined with the aftereffects of the telepathic wrestling match that had gone on in his head, had left Nathan weak and in poor control of the techno-organic virus and between Jean, Mirrin, and Domino there had been no trouble in keeping him in bed. He had slept (not his idea) on the flight home and hadn't been up and about since their arrival and Scott was sure that Nathan was close to exploding from the inactivity. 

"McCoy sent you to baby-sit me, didn't he?" Nathan asked, as irritated as Scott imagined he would be.

Scott tried very hard not to smile at his son's petulant expression. It was the exact same face he used to make as a toddler when he would balk at being put down for a nap. And while it was significantly less cute, Scott found it strangely endearing. This, too, he kept to himself. 

Nathan still had an IV line in his arm, but Hank had said that that would be the last one as he could now eat. Actually, Hank had said something involving finding a more productive use for Nathan's jaw than sniping at everyone who crossed his vision field. 

"You have been rather... brusque with him," Scott replied noncommittally as he sat down on a stool in line with Nathan's knees. "He's not intentionally trying to piss you off."

"All he had to do was verify that my head was fine other than the headache and..." Nathan trailed off at Scott's baleful stare and sighed. "I'm not a very patient patient."

"Really?" Scott asked, the bemused sarcasm fairly dripping onto the floor. "Hank'll live, although a word of either apology or thanks probably wouldn't be out of place. Everyone is kind of looking forward to you being up and about."

"The sooner I'm up, the sooner I'm leaving?"

"Nathan," Scott sighed disappointedly. 

"A joke, Slym, a joke," Nathan replied with a frown. "I make them once in a while."

"I heard that rumor once. Didn't put much faith in it."

"Yeah, well." Nathan rubbed his head vigorously, leaving his hair a wild mess in its wake. Then, as if he realized how it must now look, he raked his fingers through it and settled it down a little. Scott gave a half-smile. Nathan had inherited the Summers hair that Scott himself hadn't but Alex had - the kind that wouldn't lie straight and tended to grow up and not out. 

And then the silence started to loom. The beeps and hums and shush-shushes of the med lab seemed to echo especially loudly and Scott could feel the tension between them. Not an angry tension, but one of expectation. Both of them knew what had to be said and both of them knew the other knew it. But this was one of those times when they couldn't let that implicit knowledge stand on its own. So they were going to have to sit there until one of them got out the words. 

"You missed most of it," Scott began, staring at his hands and the floor. "But Sam... He did really well. Really well. He's a good fighter. A good person."

"I know," Nathan replied, sounding a little relieved that they were starting with something else. 

"You did well with him," Scott continued. "Even if you occasionally don't do well by him." A pause. "Not like I should be one to talk."

"There are times when I'm thankful that Sam is as strong and as smart as he is that he can still respect me - and for some flonqed-up reason still like me - despite everything," Nathan replied in a quiet, wondrous voice, choosing not to address Scott's guilt right then and there. "And the rest of the time I'm glad he's still got his frailties so that I can be reminded that it's not good to break _everything_ that's given to me in trust."

Scott nodded. "Well, thanks for letting me borrow him."

Nathan made some noise to contradict and Scott cut him off. "We both know that if you said 'don't go to the X-Men' he wouldn't. At least if you gave him a compelling reason. And we both know that if you said 'come with me', he would drop everything - including the X-Men - to do so."

"I think you overestimate my thrall," Nathan said, his exhaustion-roughened voice carrying amusement in its gravelly tone. "But I wouldn't... He needs things that I can't give him right now. He needs... someone a little better adjusted to the civilian world. You and Redd... He's had so much taken away from him. I would give him some of what I had."

Scott looked at him thoughtfully, not turning away, refusing to let Nathan regret that confession. "Thanks."

The silence descended once more and Scott found himself reading the titles of the reference books Hank had lined up on the shelf closest to his desk before finding the words to begin again. 

"We think we've got all of the Kurioon bases eradicated," he said. "There was some sort of thing in the Yukon, of all places."

"Makes sense," Nathan replied, fidgeting slightly. "Desert and tundra. And a trap in paradise."

"Well, Alpha Flight took care of it," Scott went on conversationally. "We can afford to be a little more methodical in our searching now that the immediate threat is taken care of. Joseph's still down in... Guatemala? Guyana? One of the two. He says he wants to check out some of the more out-of-the-way districts, see if there were any villages wiped out that we didn't know about, any bases we missed. I think he's hiding from Rogue, but I'm not going to call him on it."

Nathan nodded and shrugged. Who was he to be throwing stones?

"How long do you think you'll be hanging around?" Scott asked, fighting the urge to stare at his hands again. "Not that I want you to leave, because I don't. I'm just..."

"Probably until Mirrin leaves," Nathan replied, a catch in his voice that didn't get past his father. Scott looked at him sharply. 

"How long until that happens, do you think?"

"Not long," Nathan replied. He was looking down, then over Scott's shoulder, anywhere but meeting his eyes.

"Is there any way...?"

"No." It was almost a sigh.

"It's just... we're sending her back to _that_."

"_We_ aren't sending her," Nathan replied firmly, finally looking at Scott. His voice was angry, bitter, and controlled all at once. "_We_ aren't letting her go. _We_ have no say in this."

"Does she?"

"I don't know," Nathan admitted quietly. 

"At first, she wasn't at all what I expected her to grow up into," Scott said after a long pause. "But now...If Jean and I..."

"Don't," Nathan commanded gently, so surprisingly gently that Scott looked up at him. "Don't start blaming yourself. Not for leaving. You had no more control over that than you do this."

"That doesn't make it any better."

"No, it doesn't," Nathan agreed. "But what is, is."

"I really hope I had nothing to do with Rachel coming up with that," Scott replied ruefully, running his fingers through his hair and adjusting his glasses. "Any version of me. It's annoyingly defeatist."

"It's pragmatic," Nathan returned with a shrug. 

"Not here and now," Scott said with conviction. "Not when there are so many options."

"So I am occasionally reminded," Nathan mused, looking meaningfully around the med lab. 

They were quiet again, a lull between storms of words. 

"You scared the crap out of me, Nathan," Scott finally began, shaking his head in remembrance. "Out of all of us. Jean... I know I can't protect you. I know I shouldn't. But... I really don't want to see you die."

Nathan fought back the flippant 'me, too' that had sprung to mind. There was no point in making this any worse than it had to be. And as much as he resented being fussed over and as much as he wished Scott's heart would listen more closely to the head Nathan knew understood everything and its implications, there was a part of Nathan - the tiny part of that adolescent boy suddenly orphaned once again - that was happy for the concern. "I know... And I'm glad you... beyond the obvious reasons, of course."

Scott nodded relaxed his taut body posture and Nathan mentally breathed a sigh of relief. It was all they were going to force each other to say in the matter. They'd each reflect on it in the privacy of their own thoughts, but...

Almost on cue, there was a knock on the door and then it immediately swished open. Mirrin poked her head in and made an apologetic face at Scott before stepping across the threshold. He was sure she had checked telepathically whether it was safe to enter before she had bothered to knock.

Scott allowed himself a smile. Instead of wearing Nathan's oversized sweatshirt, Mirrin was in a t-shirt that actually fit her, a Mercy College shirt that was obviously Jean's, and her usual sweatpants. "Finally warming up to this climate?"

"I guess," Mirrin replied with an amused shrug. "I'm sorry to interrupt. I just wanted to retrieve my hair clip." She waved the contraption - a surprisingly high-tech device that she had graciously let Hank play with for a little while. Instead of putting it in her hair - currently in a ponytail - she clipped it to the hem of her t-shirt. 

Mirrin had been a rather recalcitrant patient immediately after they had landed, Hank stitching up the cuts above and below her eye with great delicacy and promising no significant scarring. The stitches didn't look as scary as Scott had imagined they would - Hank had used some light-colored thread that prevented the young woman from looking like a fugitive from a pirate ship. 

"No interruption," Scott replied, then remembered that Mirrin hadn't been down to the med lab in the hours since Nathan had regained consciousness. "Do you want to say hello?" He gestured with his head towards Nathan, whom Mirrin couldn't see because of the curtain that separated him from the rest of the med lab. 

"He's speaking again?" Mirrin asked with a disappointed sigh. 

"You know I am, Min," Nathan growled non-threateningly. 

"I was hoping it was only temporary," Mirrin replied blithely, coming around the curtain from behind to stand at the head of Nathan's bed. She stood on her tip-toes to lean over the bed railing and kiss his forehead, murmuring something in some language that Scott didn't understand. 

Nathan suddenly grabbed Mirrin's arm and pulled her away from him so that he could see her face. 

"What?" Mirrin asked, frowning at the rough treatment and then reaching for the wound, careful not to touch it. "I failed to duck again."

Nathan opened his mouth, but no words came out. Instead, he sighed heavily. 

"You remember this wound, don't you?" Mirrin asked thoughtfully as she wiggled out of his grip.

Nathan nodded. "I think I said something unkind about it when I saw it," he replied with a lightness of tone that Scott didn't believe was real. "The stitches..."

"I was tempted not to get them because of that," Mirrin replied with a shrug. "But the alternative was to leave the wound as it was and, despite Slym's excellent field dressing, that would have been even messier."

"Probably," Nathan allowed. 

"Well, I didn't mean to interrupt you two," she said, giving them both a slight bow. "I'll leave you until later."

With that, she left the med lab and Scott watched her go before turning back to Nathan. "What was that all about?"

"What?"

"You look like you saw a ghost."

Nathan sighed heavily, then stared at the wall opposite him for a long moment. "I did," he finally admitted. 

"Do you want to..."

"No," Nathan said quietly, shaking his head. "I really don't."

***

"Uh-oh," Alex murmured as he came into the kitchen. 

Jean frowned at him. "What?"

"I'm disturbing a coffee klatch," he explained, pointing vaguely at where Jean was sitting with Ororo and Betsy. He opened up the fridge and stuck his head in. "The three witches. You're going to talk about me now. I've entered your witchy sights, so I'm fair game."

Betsy coughed delicately. "You're always fair game, Alex."

After using both hands and a foot to gracelessly keep the condiments Jean had sent his way for the witch comments from attacking him, Alex emerged with the bowl of strawberries and pointed a celery stalk at Betsy. "But that's gossiping. It's different. If you see me, then I simply become something to remark upon. A talking point. It has none of the negative connotations of gossiping."

"I do not gossip," Ororo said imperiously, failing miserably to hide her amusement. 

"You may not," Alex replied with a shrug as he closed the refrigerator door with his foot. "But the two of them certainly do."

"You are so paranoid," Jean accused with a smile. "Are we not supposed to talk to each other?"

"You do it furtively," he said, examining the strawberries to see if they looked washed. "What I don't understand is what you talk about. You live in the same house. It's not like there's much news to catch up on when you see each other a dozen times a day."

"You've lived alone for too long," Betsy told him. "All that silence and sun is starting to loosen your already precarious grip on reason."

"Actually, he has always been like this," Ororo corrected, picking a grape from the bunch sitting on a plate before the three women. 

"See, now you're talking about me," Alex said with a self-satisfied nod. "You wouldn't have done so if I hadn't come into the kitchen."

"Well, now we're going to talk about what sort of a nut you are," Jean replied, telekinetically taking the bowl of strawberries out of Alex's hands and bringing them to the sink, turning on the water. "Instead of talking about other things about you."

Alex followed his snack to the sink. "No salacious rumors, please."

"That would be unfair to Mirrin," Betsy replied, grinning brightly as Alex blushed and groaned. "Where is she, anyway?" 

"Not a clue," Alex answered, turning off the water and dumping the strawberries out of the colander Jean had transferred them to and back into the bowl. "I haven't seen her since dinner."

"She's out by the little lake," Jean told him after a moment's pause. "And no, you wouldn't be disturbing her... Don't give me that resentful look."

"You _are_ fair game now," Ororo chided. 

Alex grumbled and left the kitchen with the strawberries. He spent what he considered to be enough time in the drawing room (making fun of Scott and Sam watching "Nova" with rapt fascination) to be properly spiteful before heading out through the back doors.

The little lake wasn't much of a lake - smaller by far than the one close to the house. But it was enough to merit stocking with fish and it had much nicer surroundings. On one side were tall oak trees that obscured it from the house, on the other were large chunks of slate that were perfect for laying out on in the summer sun or using as a perch to fish from. 

Mirrin was on one of the rocks, on her back with her feet in the water and staring up at the sky when Alex found her. She was still and he wondered about how accurate Jean's suggestion about not bothering her was. 

"I didn't think I'd ever get a chance to do this," Mirrin said without moving and Alex took this as permission to approach. 

"Relax?" he asked as he sat down next to her on the rock. Idly, he noticed no shoes nearby.

She looked up at him and made a face. "In my mind, when I meditate... I have a place like this. Not trees like these, although I might add some... but water to dangle my feet in and a sky filled with stars... The real thing is much better."

Alex looked up at the sky. "It's still too urban to get a good look at the stars here. The lights from the city make the sky too bright. Up in Alaska, where my grandparents are, it's beautiful. You can see everything... You could go there, couldn't you? Just pop off for a few hours, come back five minutes later here? Or Hawaii... you'd like it there. It's Vanuatu without the killer robots... What?"

"Nothing," Mirrin replied with a smile. 

"So whattya say? How about let's go to Hawaii for a week? I'm sure Jean has a bathing suit you can borrow," Alex suggested. "And it's not like we'd have to pay for airfare."

"It wouldn't be a good idea," Mirrin said, sitting up. 

Alex looked at her thoughtfully. "Is it me? I can just give you coordinates and you can go by yourself..."

Mirrin shook her head. "It's not you. It sounds like a lovely plan, a lovely place."

"But?"

"But I don't think I should go anywhere too far right now," Mirrin said slowly, wrapping her arms around herself. She was still wearing Jean's t-shirt and Alex realized that with the night's chill and her feet in the water, Mirrin was probably freezing. He shifted over to sit closer to her, enough so that she'd feel some of the warmth that always radiated off of him without making it seem like he was trying to make a move. Which he was still trying to find a way to do, but he was hoping for a subtler route. 

"This is about you going back to your time, isn't it?" Alex asked, sudden realization dawning. He had consciously not thought about that - every time he did all he could see was the future-Mirrin getting decapitated. 

Mirrin nodded. "They're coming to get me soon."

"Who's they and how soon?" 

"Askani Sisters and very soon," Mirrin replied with a shudder that Alex wasn't sure whether it came from the cold or the topic. 

"But you can come back to this moment," he reasoned. "You can go off to Maui for a week - a year - and still come back to now, right?"

"I can, but I can't... Nathan started when he saw my stitches," she said, reaching up to almost touch her eye. "He remembered them, remembered when he saw them. That means I go back there-and-then with them. And I wouldn't have them if I had spent a week with you in Hawaii."

Alex took a deep breath and exhaled forcefully, but it couldn't relieve the pressure in his chest. "That's so little time."

"I know." 

"I had some crazy idea of figuring out a way to keep you from going back to that... some way to... You don't deserve that, Mirrin. You don't deserve that end," he said in a voice barely above a whisper. 

"I'd like to think that I don't, either," Mirrin agreed ruefully. "But it doesn't really matter."

Alex knew in his heart that Dawnsilk hadn't been lying when she had shown that image. It was what had happened - what would happen. And it gutted him. He started when he felt a very cold arm snake around his midsection and a head lean on his shoulder, but he quickly returned the embrace. "You're frozen solid," he murmured. He felt more than saw her shrug. 

"I wanted to come out here," she said into his chest. "I didn't know if I'd have a chance to do it tomorrow."

He squeezed harder then, as if he could keep Mirrin in this time and away from that fate simply through holding on to her. 

"The Mother Askani warned me that this would be a hard mission," she murmured. "I didn't think it would be for anything other than tactical reasons."

"That's Rachel, isn't it?" Alex asked, shifting so as to ease the torque on Mirrin's body. "I thought she died bringing Scott and Jean into your time."

"She did," Mirrin confirmed. 

"Shouldn't that have been years before you were born?"

"Not that many, but yes, it was." Mirrin pulled her feet out of the water and shook them off before twisting and draping her legs over Alex's outstretched ones. 

"You went back in time to her, then?" Alex asked as he reached for Mirrin's feet to warm them up. 

"Many times," she said, wiggling her toes in Alex's grip. "Aliya and I used to go... especially when Madame Sanctity's orders were... more strange than usual. We wanted to learn how to be 'real' Askani. We didn't understand the cost that knowledge would have... It was the Mother Askani who taught us about nexus points. She didn't want us going back through time and changing things we shouldn't change...She was the one who gave me my battle name, actually. Ay'el. Part irony, part tribute, and the rest curse."

Alex made a noise of non-comprehension and curiosity. 

"It comes from an ancient word, I think. 'Ariel'. Lioness of God. Protector of the One, holy champion," Mirrin quoted bitterly. 

"We used to call Kitty Pryde that...oh," Alex trailed off as comprehension set in. "Rachel and Kitty..."

"It was meant as a tribute to Kate Rasputin," Mirrin explained, nodding. "The woman who sacrificed herself in order to allow the Mother Askani to go back in time to prevent the horrors they had both lived through."

"I can see being upset about the irony," Alex said. "I'd hate to be reminded like that."

Mirrin shrugged as if to say that nothing better could be expected of the Sisterhood. 

They were silent then, comfortable in their loose embrace to sit and listen to the sounds of nature at night. Alex closed his eyes and tried to focus on the woman in his arms and forget that this was probably going to be the only night they'd ever get to do this. 

"I've wondered if I get to come back to this time again," Mirrin finally murmured. "I can't ask Nathan because he doesn't know. It would be nice..."

"It'd be one hell of a long-distance relationship," Alex returned without thinking, only afterwards wincing at how much that inferred. "Sorry."

"What for?" Mirrin asked with some amusement. "I don't think this is a physical position of casual acquaintanceship. And it is not in my nature to be... cuddly? That's the word I want?"

"That's the word you want," Alex confirmed with a chuckle. Feeling brave, he risked dropping a kiss onto her forehead. She looked up at him, arching her undamaged eyebrow meaningfully. 

"Tell me something," he said, running the pad of his thumb along her cheekbone. "And this is just for academic purposes. Have you ever been taken over by forces of evil?"

Mirrin looked at him strangely. "Apart from the Sisterhood, no. At least not yet. You'll have to check with Nathan for anything that happens after I go back. Dare I ask why you want to know this now?"

"A depressing theme in my romantic history," he explained with a frown that deepened when it became clear that Mirrin was losing her fight to keep from laughing. 

"I'm sorry," she apologized, smiling as she spoke. "I'm sure it was not funny at the time."

"Times," Alex corrected, then grinned himself. "But you don't need to apologize. Nobody else does when they laugh at me because almost every woman I fall for has tried to kill me."

"Well, I promise to do my best to avoid such activities," Mirrin told him with amused earnestness. 

"Oh, good," he whispered as he tilted her face up to his. She gave him a surprisingly shy smile before he leaned down to kiss her. When the kiss broke, Mirrin undid the band that held her hair back before moving back into Alex's arms. 

Since their return from Vanuatu, Alex had noted that Mirrin had not taken to hiding in the depths of Nathan's old sweatshirt. He had spent enough time with Rogue over the years to appreciate the significance of someone switching to short sleeves. And he thought he knew why.

Alex ghosted his fingers over her face as he kissed her, his warm hands over her cold skin, down her jaw to her neck. He could feel where the scar across her throat began, the slight rise of the skin that could barely be seen unless looked for, and traced along its edge delicately until Mirrin pulled away and looked at him questioningly as she bit her lower lip.

"It doesn't make you ugly," he whispered to her, brushing an errant curl from her face. 

"Nobody here is marked," she replied, not quite meeting his eyes and not letting him draw her face back to his. "Everyone is untouched..."

"The hell we are," Alex snorted gently. "But it doesn't matter. Not to me. Mirrin... Min," he used her nickname intentionally. Not used to hearing from him, she finally looked up. "As long as you don't have a psimitar as a belly-button ornament, you look beautiful to me. We're all scarred in our own ways. It's just surface... I'm going to remember you as beautiful. And every cut, scrape, bruise, and blaster wound you've ever had isn't going to change that."  
  
Mirrin shook her head and smiled at him, murmuring something as she leaned in to kiss him again. 

At some point, Alex had planned to ask Mirrin if she wanted to move indoors and away from flying teammates, but he never got the chance. They had progressed to her lying on the rock beneath him, his hand at her waist and his lips at her neck when suddenly he felt her tense and then cry out in something between frustration and anguish. And then just start to cry. 

"What is it?" he asked, shifting over so that he was leaning on his side over her and cupping her face with great concern. Alex knew that Mirrin was a soldier and that bad things often happened to women soldiers while in captivity. Fearing he had triggered some sort of bad memory, he felt his heart jump into his throat as he watched tears fall from closed eyes as she lay beneath him. "Did I do something? Did..."

"They're here," Mirrin breathed out, eyes still closed and trying hard to regain her composure. "They've come for me."

Numb. Alex felt completely numb. He sat up and back on his haunches and waited for Mirrin to sit up. She took a deep breath and did after a moment, sniffling and wiping away tears. 

"I'm supposed to be taking this a lot better than I am," she said sardonically between sniffles. 

"To hell with the 'good soldier' routine," Alex retorted, pulling her into an embrace. He felt her arms go around him and hold on to him fiercely. "You'll do what they want you to. You don't have to pretend to enjoy it."

After a few deep breaths on both their parts, they sat up, smoothed themselves out, and then didn't move. Finally, Mirrin reached for his hand, squeezed it, and started to get up. 

Alex didn't let go until they were at the back entrance. The doors were open and a stricken Jean was standing there waiting for them. 

"I've got to go change," Mirrin said quietly, reaching up and giving Alex a quick kiss on the lips before teleporting away. 

Alex looked at Jean and tried to say something, but couldn't. The tears he had held for Mirrin's sake now fell and Jean hugged him tightly. He knew she understood that his pain came more from Mirrin's future than his own present. They stood there until they heard the noise in the study get louder.

"Let's go be brave," Jean whispered to him, wiping away her own tears. 

When they entered the room, everyone was there. Including Mirrin, Nathan, and three Askani sisters who looked awed at Scott when he crossed the room to stand next to Jean and Alex.

"Do you know where you're going to end up when you get back?" Sam asked Mirrin thoughtfully. 

"A day out of Lavaar," she replied, looking at Nathan from a few feet away. "In an abandoned warehouse. I have to join the Clan Chosen, who have been on march there for a week. _Someone_ is going to be upset with me for being two days late."

Nathan tried to smile, but knew it didn't work. He remembered being more than just upset with her - especially when she finally appeared with her face still showing signs of a fight she had refused to talk about. He had still been cross with her when they teleported into the mech lab and their last words together had been angry ones. That was one of the reasons they had decided to teleport out separately.

"I don't know how to thank you," Scott said, trying to keep the awkwardness out of his voice. "You... you've done more good here than you probably realize. In addition to keeping my son alive... I'm grateful. You grew up well, Min." He gave her a quick hug that she returned. 

Alex thought she was communicating privately with Jean, who smiled shakily and nodded. "I will," Jean said aloud. 

And then he felt it. Like a tap being opened in his mind. But instead of water came affection - Mirrin's affection for him. What they had was too new to be imagined as love, but there was a chance it might have grown to become that and mixed in was a bit of mournfulness that they'd never find out. By the time Alex started noticing the rest of the world again, Mirrin had apparently gone through the rest of the awkward farewells as she was now standing before Nathan and looking up at him. 

Nathan held her in a fierce embrace, staring down the three Askani and daring the waiting Sisters to rip Min from his arms. 

"Hey, Dayspring, some of us aren't half-metal," Mirrin said, her voice muffled against his chest. "Don't squeeze so hard."

Nathan's mind was racing. It would be so easy to say something. So easy to tell her not to let his anger at her refusal to tell him where she had been get under her skin. To tell her to let him wait for her in the mech lab while she set the charges. So easy to prevent a capture that would lead to ten years of abuse and torture. So easy to save her from an end that was as disrespectful as it was welcome, a relief from the pain and humiliation that had finally broken her indomitable spirit. It would set Rachel scrambling for another way to drive him to his fate other than by forcing Mirrin to her own. Perhaps it would be long enough for him to fix things on this end so that Mirrin would never have to be the final sacrifice. 

"Min," he began softly. "You know..."

"Don't," she whispered, pulling back enough to pull her arm around and put a finger to his lips and kissed his cheek. "Don't say a word. I don't want to know. I want to have one surprise in my life, okay?" 

So he didn't. And it hurt, the words that would save her burning a hole in his chest with a pain he didn't think he could feel anymore. 

"I love you. You know that, right?" he asked instead.

"I know that," she answered quietly. "And I you."

The three Askani sisters cleared their throats and re-arranged their robes and made ready to depart. Mirrin turned her head to them and nodded and they approached the pair. 

"And you know that I never, ever did anything that would put you at a disadvantage to the Askani, right? I'm your soldier, not theirs. Always, Nat'an," she whispered in the dialect they had spoken as children in the North Country, putting her hand gently on his cheek. 

Nathan could feel the energy building up around them. The sisters would assure that Mirrin didn't accidentally teleport him as well even as they added their power to Mirrin's own. 

"Always," he answered back as he felt the surge of chronal energy explode as Mirrin disappeared in a shimmer of light. He put his hand to where could still feel the touch of hers on his cheek and took a deep breath. Opening eyes he hadn't realized were closed, he exhaled, the breath coming out not nearly as smooth as he wished it would in a room full of people watching him intently. He idly felt a wave of tentative comfort coming through his psi-link with Domino, but could do nothing more than send vague acknowledgement in return. Nathan wished he could teleport as well, that he could disappear and not have to face the question that he knew was coming. 

"How long?" Alex asked, his voice barely a whisper and the pain all to clear. 

Nathan didn't even try to misunderstand. "The battle at Lavaar was a long one, maybe three days. It turned into a siege and we had to wait them out. We started to scavenge for supplies on the fourth day. Mirrin and I were in charge of cleaning out a mechanics lab. We didn't know it was a trap. I got away. She didn't."

"Five days, then," Remy said, shaking his head in disbelief. "Was it quick?"

"No," Nathan answered, then turned around to leave. He had to get out, had to get away before either he was pressed for details or he exploded on his own from the emotions roiling around inside of him. 

They watched him leave, but when Domino made to follow him, Alex stopped her. 

"Let me go," he said hoarsely. "Mirrin asked me to tell him something after she left."

Domino met his eyes with a kinder look than he'd have expected from her and nodded. 

And so Alex followed the sound of Nathan's heavy footsteps towards the back foyer and out to the back porch. He'd do his best to make Nathan realize that he wasn't to blame for Mirrin's death, that she went into her future with her eyes open. Alex really wanted to curl up somewhere and cry, to grieve. But right now, he had a story to tell. 

___

finis

http://www.geocities.com/nikimarzione/ 


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